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DISCOURSE 



IN COMMEMORATION OF 



THE GLORIOUS REFORMATION 



SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN SYNOD OF WEST 
PENNSYLVANIA, 

BY S. S.SCHMUCKER, D. D. 
Professor of Theology in the Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. 

PUBLISHED BY SYNOD. 

SECOND EDITION, IMPROVED. 



NEW YORK: 

GOULD & NEWMAN. 

PHILADELPHIA! HENRY PERKINS. 

1838. 



■• * : ^ 



^v 

f 



Entered according 1 to the Act of Congress, in the 
year 1838, by Gould &. Newman, in the Clerk's Office 
of the District Court of the Southern District of New 
York. 



I. ASHMEAD AND CO. PRINTERS, 



PREFACE. 



The following discourse was prepared by appointment 
of the Ev. Lutheran Synod of West Pennsylvania, in 
accordance with a resolution of that body, loudly called 
for by the signs of the times, recommending that a 
discourse on the Reformation be annually delivered by 
each member of Synod before the people of his charge, 
and resolving that one should annually be delivered 
before the Synod, on the same topic. 

In relinquishing his manuscript to the Synod for pub- 
lication, the writer acted under the conviction, that the 
real character of popery, according to the theory of its 
unalterable canons, wiiich are carried into execution 
wherever papists have entire power, is but imperfectly 
known by our American citizens. He regrets, that in 
presenting the features of this interesting subject, he 
was unavoidably led to refer to the corruptions of a 
church, some of whose members are found in our own 
community, with whom he and his brethren are in daily 
habits of friendly intercourse. This feeling is the more 
sensibly experienced, as he believes the great body of 
our native Catholics to be as true friends to our coun- 
try as the mass of our citizens generally ; and believes 
them not only innocent of any design against our liber- 
ties, but even unacquainted with the long catalogue of 
incidents in the history of their church, by which the 
1* 



VI PREFACE. 

popes and priests have for twelve centuries past proved 
themselves the enemies of human liberty, civil and re- 
ligious ; unacquainted, generally, with those dangerous 
principles in the canons and decrees of their church, by 
which their priesthood were actuated in their former 
persecutions, and in conformity with which they may 
reasonably be expected to destroy the present liberties 
of both Protestants and Catholics, unless the eyes of 
the community are opened in time. Yet, as he will 
make no statements unsustained by good authority, he 
cannot be responsible, if it shall appear that popery is 
a corruption of true apostolical Christianity ; that the 
Romish priests have generally been enemies to the 
liberty of their own members, as well as of Protes- 
tants ; and that the Roman Catholic church at this 
day, and in our own country, avows principles hostile 
to the rights of man and the liberties of the land, to 
which our Catholic fellow citizens have unconsciously 
assented whenever they professed indefinitely, to be- 
lieve as Holy mother church believes. Our Catholic 
friends ought rather to unite with us in the denuncia- 
tion of principles, which are alike repugnant to their 
feelings of natural right, inconsistent with the future 
security of their own liberties, as well as ours, and 
adverse to the declarations of God's holy word. 

S. S. SCHMUCKEH/ 

TkeoL Seminary* Gettysburg) Oct 13, 183? * 



DISCOURSE, &Gs 



When, in the course of human events, we 
behold a people emerge from slavery, and 
" assume, among the powers of earth, the 
separate and equal station, to which the laws 
of nature and of nature's God entitle them," 
the sight is one of no ordinary interest ; for 
slavery is odious, the civil rights and privi- 
leges of a nation are valuable, and new scope 
is given for the development of mind in the 
prosecution of moral, social and political prin- 
ciples. But, my brethren, should we behold 
a revolution, in which the yoke of bondage 
is thrown off, not by one people, but, in rapid 
succession, by a whole family of nations, and 
that yoke not only one of civil, but also of re- 
ligious bondage, the spectacle would rise to 
incalculably greater interest; because the 
effects are far more extensive, the principles 
involved far more elevated, and the privi- 
leges conferred such as appertain, not only 
to the temporal, but also to the eternal inte- 



rests of men. Such was the glorious Refor- 
mation of the sixteenth century, effected by- 
God himself, not miraculously, but in accor- 
dance with the analogies of his Providence, 
through a band of intrepid, noble-minded, yet 
imperfect men. The fruits, both civil and 
religious, of this Revolution, we, in these 
United States, most richly enjoy; but its 
origin and incidents, we are prone too often 
to forget, and too seldom to inculcate on the 
popular mind. 

? Tis little more than three hundred years, 
since Luther,* confessedly the most promi- 
nent of these moral heroes, the chieftain of 
this Spartan band, was born ; and about six 
weeks afterwards his illustrious coadjutor, 
Zuingle,f first saw the light. At that time all 
the civilized nations of Europe — Germany, 
France, England, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, 
Portugal, Italy, &c. &c, however diverse 
their languages, and habits, and political 
interests and institutions, were consolidated 
into one religious despotism, having one man, 

* Luther was born Nov. 10th, 1483. 
■j" Zuingle was born Jan. 1st, H84. 



the pope at Rome, the pretended vicegerent 
of Christ on earth, at its head ! Papal Rome 
was then the mistress of the earth, in a far 
more important sense than in the days of 
her pagan glory, when she swayed the scep- 
tre of political dominion, but suffered her 
vanquished foes to worship their own gods. 
Then she controlled civil interests and out- 
ward acts, now she gave laws to the intel- 
lect of half the known world, regulated their 
social intercourse, prescribed their religious 
duties, and made her power felt in the inmost 
recesses of the soul. The pretended succes- 
sor of St. Peter, still claimed the right 

" Of raising monarchs to their thrones, 
Or sinking them with equal ease !" 

Forgetting that M no man can forgive sins 
but God only,"* he sacrilegiously pretended 
that like " the Son of man, he had power on 
earth, to forgive sins."t And when thwarted 
in his purposes, he claimed the right of plac- 

'* Mark 2: 7. Luke5:'21. Ephes. 4: 32. Psalm 
130: 4. Isaiah 43: 25. 44: 22. Jer. 50: 20. 
f Matth. 9; 6. 



10 

nig whole nations under papal interdict, and 
thus as he pretended, and an ignorant, super- 
stitious people believed, of closing the gates 
of heaven against them ! 

Such was the galling yoke of spiritual 
tyranny under which the civilized world 
was groaning, when He, who purchased the 
church with his own blood, and in prophetic 
vision revealed to John, the downfall of Ba- 
bylon, the mother of harlots, sent delive- 
rance. Now, how is she fallen ! Stript of 
her most valuable dominions, and wooed 
with little ardour by her flatterers that re- 
main ! Now she is seen begging favour at 
the feet of monarchs, who once trembled at 
her nod, and seeking by a desperate effort 
in this new world, to retrieve the losses and 
recover from the shocks inflicted on her by 
the still lingering effects of the Reformation 
in the old. That Reformation stands unique 
on the tablets of universal history ; there has 
been no other equal to it, and there cannot 
be. For the papal hierarchy will never re- 
gain such a colossal magnitude, nor such 
despotic sway over the civilized world; and 
the nations of Europe will never again bow 



11 

to such an iron yoke. That marvellous and 
wide-spread revolution in the church, stands 
authenticated as the peculiar work of God, 
and exhibits the most brilliant displays of his 
providential guidance, as well as verifica- 
tions of the promise : " Lo, I am with you 
always, even to the end of the world." 



The period for this event was wisely chosen by 
the Head of the Church. 

As changes in the character of individuals 
and of nations are by the laws of mind gene- 
rally gradual ; so the meridian light of the 
Reformation did not immediately burst in 
upon the midnight gloom of the dark ages. 
The two centuries preceding the Reforma- 
tion may be regarded as the dawn of that 
glorious day, as preparatory and introduc- 
tory to it. In Prague, the capitol of Bohe- 
mia, not more than about seventy miles from 
Wittenberg, Conrad Stickna,* and John Mi- 
licz,f had publicly inveighed against the cor- 

* Obiit. A. D. 1369. f A. D. 1374 obiit. 



12 

ruption of both priests and people, and espe- 
cially against the mendicant friars a century 
and a half before the Reformation of Luther; 
and Matthias von Janow, the confessor of 
Charles IV. had even gone so far in several 
instances, as to administer the holy supper in 
both kinds, although he was soon compelled 
to recant. Wickliffe in England, and Peter 
d'Ailly, Chancellor of the University at Paris, 
bore similar testimony against Romish cor- 
ruption. 

In the century immediately preceding the 
Reformation, Huss and Jerome arose as wit- 
nesses for the truth under very favourable 
circumstances. They dwelt in the same city 
where Stickna and Milicz had taught before 
them. And the University of Prague, in 
which they were professors, was at that time 
the most celebrated in all Europe, except 
that in Paris, and was frequented by thou- 
sands of young men from every part of Ger- 
many. John Gerson also distinguished him- 
self as an advocate for reform. Accordingly 
a partial reformation had commenced in Bo- 
hemia. A liturgy in the vernacular tongue 
was there extensively used, and the council 



13 



convened at Basil, in 1433, even sanctioned 
its use, and allowed the Bohemians to admi- 
nister the cup to the laity. Nor were the 
views of these Reformers entirely superficial. 
If we concentrate the different rays of their 
light, they will amount to a distinct prepara- 
tive to the glorious Reformation which fol- 
lowed. The positions maintained by the Huss- 
ites and Taborites of that century, were the 
unrestricted preaching of God's word ; the 
restoration of the cup to the laity ; that the 
priesthood should be divested of its secular 
power and wealth; the introduction of a 
more rigid and scriptural church discipline ; 
the abolition of monasteries, and images in 
worship ; the rejection of the doctrine of Pur- 
gatory, and of Auricular Confession, This 
light, though circumscribed in its influence, 
being confined to Bohemia, served, in con- 
nexion with scattered rays in other countries, 
to prepare the Catholic world for the meridian 
splendour of the Reformation, and doubtless 
assisted even Luther himself in investigating 
the foundations of Papacy. 

Such was the state of things when Martin 
Luther was born, Nov. 10, 1483, a year 
2 



14 

which witnessed alike the unabated preten- 
sions, and the waning power of Romanism, 
in the unexecuted papal bull and interdict 
against the Republic of Venice; and in the 
memorable Auto de Fe, at Seville in Spain, 
which soon succeeded, at which a number 
of individuals who rejected some of the Ro- 
mish errors, were publicly committed to the 
flames by the misnamed holy Inquisition. 
Thus we see, that the fearful and wide- 
spreading machinery of Papal despotism, 
had indeed been not a little impaired by the 
friction of ages, and some of its wheels no 
longer revolved in effective concert with the 
whole ; but it remained for the monk of Wit- 
tenberg, placing his lever on the fulcrum of 
the Bible, to ungear the whole machine, and 
shatter a large portion of it to atoms ! 

The period from Luther's birth till the 
public commencement of the Reformation 
on the 31st of October, 1517, was rich in 
events preparatory to the great conflict. 
The irreligious and profligate character of 
the popes was well calculated still farther to 
impair the moral energy of the whole eccle- 
siastical machinery; for though unconverted 



15 

men will be satisfied with unconverted mi- 
nisters, there is a general sense of moral 
propriety pervading our race, which de- 
mands of the priests of our holy religion ex- 
emption from flagrant immorality. But the 
popes of this period were a disgrace to hu- 
manity. Innocent VIII. and in a still more 
flagrant manner, Alexander VI. who was 
himself the illegitimate son of Pope Calixtus 
III. squandered the papal treasures on the 
offspring of their licentiousness. Alexander 
VI. is styled by an eminent historian " a 
monster of a man, inferior to no one of the 
most abandoned tyrants of antiquity."* And 
Julius II. was a restless, ambitious soldier, 
who though the pretended vicegerent of the 
Prince of Peace, involved in war succes- 
sively, the Venetians, the Swiss, the Spa- 
niards and the French. If such was the 
character of the Holy Fathers themselves, 
there can be nothing surprising in the cor- 
ruption of the great body of the priests and 
people, and nothing dubious in the alleged 
necessity of a reformation both in the head 

* Murdock's Mosheim, vol. iii. p. 9. 



16 



and members of the Romish church. Indeed, 
so glaring was this necessity, that it had 
been long acknowledged by priests and coun- 
cils and emperors, and was not directly de- 
nied by the popes themselves. As early as 
1409, the council of Pisa decreed a Refor- 
mation of the church, in her head and mem- 
bers ; and let it be remembered, that this 
was a general council, attended by twenty- 
four cardinals, a great many bishops, arch- 
bishops, and other prelates, three hundred 
doctors of divinity and of canon law, and 
representatives of thirteen universities. The 
same necessity was reiterated by three or 
four subsequent councils in this century, but 
the work itself was as often defeated by the 
intrigue of the popes, who did not relish the 
salutary discipline, aimed at their infallible 
holiness 3s ! 

Nor should we forget to enumerate, among 
the preparatives of the Reformation, the re- 
vival of learning in the West, the increased 
facility of influencing the intellect of Europe 
by the recently invented art of printing, and 
the emigration of many of the Greek literati, 
after the capture of Constantinople by Mo- 



17 

hamed II. in 1453, and the downfall of the 
Greek empire. The light of science and 
literature is ever hostile to superstition and 
intellectual bondage. Numerous writers had 
thus sprung up, w 7 ho constituted a liberal 
party* and were strenuously opposed by the 
friends of ignorance and superstition. They 
ridiculed the vices and ignorance of the 
church and priesthood, pouring into their 
moral wounds the most mordacious salt of 
satire ; but they were destitute of that moral 
principle necessary to bear them through 
the perils and privations of the Reformation, 
and, like their leader Erasmus, turned trai- 
tors to the cause in the day of fiery trial. 
Nor was this surprising. For, although the 
popular reverence for the papal hierarchy 
had much abated, the mightiest monarchs 
of Europe regarded the popes as formidable 
enemies, on account of their influence on the 
oath of allegiance of every Catholic subject. 
The few individuals who had attempted to 

*To this party belonged Renchlin, Erasmus, Park- 
keimer, Herman von Busch, Ulrich von Hutten, and 
all the more enlightened minds of the age. 
2* 



18 

carry forward the standard of reform, were 
unceremoniously crushed beneath the thun- 
derbolts of the Vatican. The blood of Huss 
and Jerome yet proclaimed aloud the ten- 
dencies of the holy mother towards refor- 
mers, and the inquisitorial agonies and dying 
groans of the pious, but enthusiastic Savo- 
narola,* of whom Luther remarked that 

* " Jerome Savonarola was born at Ferrara, Oct. 
12, 1452 ; religiously educated, and early distinguish- 
ed for genius and learning. His father intended him 
for his own profession, that of physic ; but he dis- 
liked it ; and, unknown to his parents, became a Do- 
minican monk, A. D. 1474. For a time, he taught 
philosophy and metaphysics ; and then was made a 
preacher and confessor. He soon laid aside the hear- 
ing of confessions, and devoted himself wholly to 
preaching, in which he was remarkably interesting 
and successful. In 1489, he went to Florence, where 
his preaching produced quite a reformation of morals. 
He attacked vice, infidelity, and false religion, with 
the utmost freedom, sparing no age or sex, and no 
condition of men, monks, priests, popes, princes, or 
common citizens. His influence was almost bound- 
less. But Florence was split into political factions ; 
and Savonarola did not avoid the danger. He was 
ardent, eloquent, and so enthusiastic, as almost to 
believe, and actually to represent what he taught, as 



19 

l f Christ had canonized him" though papists 
burned him ;* served as a beacon to deter 
others from the paths of reform. 

Amid these circumstances it was, that 
God, in his own time, raised up an illustrious 
band of reformers, in the very heart of the 

being communicated to him by revelation. The ad- 
verse faction accused him to the pope, who sum- 
moned him to Rome. Savonarola would not go ; and 
was ordered to cease preaching. A Franciscan in- 
quisitor was sent to confront him. The people pro- 
tected him. But at length, vacillating about putting 
his cause to the test of a fire ordeal, he lost his popu- 
larity in a measure. His enemies seized him by 
force, put him to the rack, and extorted from him 
some concessions, which they interpreted as confes- 
sions of guilt; and then strangled him, burned his 
body, and threw the ashes into the river. Thus he 
died, May 23, 1498. — His character has been assailed 
and defended, most elaborately, and by numerous 
persons both Catholics and Protestants. His wri- 
tings were almost all in Italian. They consist of 
more than 300 sermons, about 50 tracts and treatises, 
and a considerable number of letters ; all displaying 
genius and piety, and some of them superior intel- 
lect." 

* Amnion's Geshichte der Homiletik, vol. i. p. 183, 



20 

church, who, endowed with the extraordi- 
nary power called for by the occasion, de- 
clared open war against her manifold cor- 
ruptions. Germany was the theatre on which 
this great conflict was commenced, and 
Luther the first of the warriors who took the 
field. God had by the special teachigns of 
his Providence and Spirit, tutored him for 
the work, and on the 31st October, 1517, 
after Tetzel, a Dominican friar, had been 
vending the papal indulgences, in the vici- 
nity of Wittenberg, with the most barefaced 
impudence, Luther in the fear of God, raised 
the standard of Reformation, by affixing to 
the church-door, his ninety-five theses against 
indulgences. From that day the commence- 
ment of the Reformation is usually dated, 
the day, which has ordinarily been cele- 
brated in commemoration of that glorious 
event. Having thus placed himself in oppo- 
sition to the holy mother church, without 
entertaining the least idea of the extent and 
importance of the work which God designed 
to accomplish by him, Luther devoted him- 
self with increased ardour to the continued 
study of that sacred volume, a copy of which 



21 



had providentially fallen into his hands ten 
years before. The change in his own views 
was gradual, and he w r as simultaneously as 
well the subject as the agent of the Refor- 
mation. In the preface to his works, written 
eighteen years after this time, he remarks : 
" Let all who read my books remember that 
I am one of those, who, as St. Augustine 
says, improved myself by writing and by 
teaching others, and belong not to those who 
in the twinkling of an eye were transformed 
from nothing into learned doctors."* And 
who does not behold the hand of Providence 
in this? As his publications were, succes- 
sively, one but a step in advance of the other, 
his former readers could the more easily 
enter into the spirit of each, and bear the 
gradations of light successively revealed. 
This circumstance, at the same time, ac- 
counts for the fact, that many of his earlier 
productions contain doctrines which he aban- 
doned in the latter part of his life. 

The successive incidents of the great ec- 
clesiastical revolution, which grew out of 

* Seckendorf, p. 89. 



22 

this small commencement, we cannot stop to 
detail. Suffice it to say, that in less than 
two weeks, Luther's Theses had traversed 
nearly all Germany; the attention of the 
greater part of Europe was soon arrested, 
and remained fixed on this conflict. For 
thirteen years was the work of reform car- 
ried forward, until all the prominent corrup- 
tions of Romanism were successively ex- 
posed, and the Reformation attained some 
maturity in Germany, as exhibited in the 
Confession presented to the Diet at Augs- 
burg in 1530. But the conflict was not yet 
at an end. Various and disastrous were the 
persecutions and trials, which the Protestant 
princes and their people, who avowed those 
doctrines, had to endure from the intoler- 
ance of the Pope, and of the Emperor at his 
instigation, for twenty-five years more, until 
the 25th of September, 1555, nine years af- 
ter Luther's death, when the pacification of 
Augsburg for the first time gave imperial 
permission to the Protestants, to worship 
God after the dictates of their own con- 
sciences. 
But no sooner had the Reformation com- 



23 



menced in Germany, than it began to spread 
in other countries, with electric rapidity, and 
the intellect of all Europe felt the shock. 
Two years after Luther published his The- 
ses, Ulrick Zwingle, one of the most learned 
and distinguished reformers, whose personal 
views of Papal corruptions had even been 
in advance of Luther's, also began the work 
of public reformation, at Zurich in Switzer- 
land, which he prosecuted with great ability 
and success, until 1531, when he lost his life 
in a battle between the Swiss Protestants 
and the Catholics who invaded their coun- 
try. Into Sweden the Reformation was in- 
troduced by Olaus Petri, a disciple of Lu- 
ther, powerfully seconded by Gustavus Vasa, 
from 1523 to 1527. In Denmark also, the 
power of the papal hierarchy was destroyed 
at an early day. About the same time nu- 
merous advocates of Luther's doctrines were 
found in Spain, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, 
Britain and the Netherlands. In England 
papacy received a fatal blow in 1533, from 
Henry VIIL, who had before so zealously 
defended the holy mother church against 
Luther, as to acquire the title of " Defender 



24 

of the Faith/' still retained by his succes- 
sors. Into Scotland the Reformed religion 
was introduced mainly by that inflexible and 
distinguished servant of God, John Knox, 
about the year 1559. Nor can we pass un- 
noticed among the honoured instruments 
of divine providence, John Calvin, who 
though not the means of originally intro- 
ducing the Reformation into any country, 
exerted a most extensive influence on all the 
Reformed churches of Europe, and contri- 
buted more than any other man, to confer 
order, maturity and stability on them all. 
Commencing his public labours in Geneva, 
in 1536, about twenty years after Luther 
arose, he continued, for thirty years, by his 
correspondence and publications, to advance 
the cause of Reformation throughout differ- 
ent portions of Europe ; so that for learning, 
influence and usefulness, he may be classed 
at the side of Luther himself. 

But instead of detailing the circumstances 
of this glorious work of God, to which we 
owe our liberty, civil and religious, let us 
contemplate a few features by which this 
Reformation is distinguished, that a more 



25 



distinct impression of its value may rest up- 
on our minds. 

I. The first feature to which we will ad- 
vert, is that it gave us free access to the 
uncorrupted fountain of truth and duty, God's 
holy word, as the only infallible rule of faith 
and practice to us. 

Well knowing the treachery of human 
memory, God, even under the Old Testa- 
ment dispensation, inscribed the decalogue 
on tablets of stone, and Moses his inspired 
servant, made a record of his other instruc- 
tions, which were to be publicly read in the 
stated worship of the people from generation 
to generation, and to be inculcated on their 
children in the house and by the way. In 
like manner the inspired apostles, whom the 
Saviour had commissioned to publish the 
gospel to all nations, knowing that the holy 
religion of the Saviour was designed for all 
generations, reduced its facts and doctrines 
to writing. The design of this act would be 
evident from the nature of the case, but se- 
veral of the inspired penmen have also dis- 
tinctly expressed it. " These things," says 
St. John, " are written, that ye might believe 
3 



26 

that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and 
that believing ye might have life through his 
name."* Before the New Testament books 
were written, the Saviour commanded to 
" search the scriptures" of the Old Testa- 
ment, and not the traditions or oral reports, 
which he condemned as tending to make 
void the sacred word. Paul says: "All 
scripture, that is, the sacred writings, are 
given by inspiration of God, and are profita- 
ble for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, 
for instruction in righteousness : * that the 
man of God may be perfect, thoroughly fur- 
nished unto all good works." This Paul 
said in the year A. D. 65, at which time all 
the books of the New Testament had been 
published, except the writings of John, the 
epistle of Jude and 2 Peter. And although 
there was an order of men appointed to pub- 
lish the gospel to all creatures; these men 
were required to study the scriptures,f and 
teach according to them.J Christians were 
taught to beware of false teachers,§ to 

* John 20 : 31, and also Paul, f * Tim. 4:15. 
% Gal. 1:8. §2 Pet. 2: 1,2. 



27 



search the scriptures daily to ascertain 
whether these things were so,"* and if even 
an angel from heaven should come publish- 
ing any other gospel than that taught by the 
apostles, he should be accursed.f But in- 
stead of adhering to the word of God as the 
only infallible rule of faith and practice, the 
Church of Rome had, for several centuries 
prior to the Reformation, elevated tradition, 
and the decrees of councils and popes, to an 
equality with God's word. Their reason for 
this unhallowed conduct may easily be in- 
ferred from the confession then made, and 
recently reiterated by a papal writerj in this 
country, that the doctrines and rites of their 
church could not be proved from the scrip- 
tures alone. The earliest records of these 
unauthorized additions to Christianity were 
of course not found in the pages of the Bible, 
but in writers of the age in which those un- 
scriptural doctrines were added to their 

*Acts 17: 11. 

f Gal. 1 : 8. Rev. 22 : 18, 19. John 5 : 39. 1 

Thess. 5: 27. Eph. 6: 17. 

X Mr. Hughes, in controversy with Dr. Brecken* 
ridge. 



28 

creed; or, in the canons of the councils who 
first approved them. The authority of these 
writers and councils was therefore magni- 
fied at the expense of God's word, during 
centuries before the Reformation, whenever 
any necessity roused them from their slum- 
ber of licentiousness and ignorance to at- 
tempt the proof of their corrupt system. But 
so far as we have been able to learn, no 
council before that of Trent, a few years 
after the Reformation, had even formally 
decreed the entire equality of human tradi- 
tions and decrees of councils with God's 
holy word. Yet the Bible itself had for 
centuries been almost an unknown book. 
Select portions only were used in worship, 
and thousands of ministers lived and died 
without having seen a copy of the entire 
scriptures. When Luther himself providen- 
tially found one in the library of the convent, 
he was surprised to perceive that the few 
passages read in the service, did not con- 
tain the whole scriptures ! ! Pelican, one of 
the reformers, declares that at the time of 
the Reformation, a Greek Testament could 
not be purchased in all Germany for any 



29 

price ! Scarcely any ministers of the age 
had a critical knowledge of the Bible, and 
when Luther arose, there was not an indivi- 
dual in the papal world, not even in all the 
University of Paris, who could confront him 
on the ground of scripture ! But the Refor- 
mation and the Bible went hand in hand. 
It was by the Bible that God commenced 
the reformation in the heart of Luther in the 
convent, and by translation of the Bible into 
the vernacular tongues, did Luther and the 
other blessed instruments of God propagate 
the great work throughout Europe. This 
was so well understood by the Romanists 
themselves, that as Sarpi, their own historian 
informs us, one of the reasons urged at the 
council of Trent for interdicting the Bible to 
the laity was, " that the Lutherans had suc- 
ceeded only with those, who had been ac- 
customed to read the Scriptures."* And 
when compelled by the progressive illumi- 
nation of the age to make some appeal to the 
" law and the testimony," one of the argu- 
ments assigned by that council for adopting 

* Sarpi, Lib. ii. § 52. (Cramp 53.) 
3* 



30 



the corrupt Latin translation instead of the 
original, was, " unless the Vulgate were de- 
clared to be divine in every part, immense 
advantages would be yielded to the Luther- 
ans, and innumerable heresies, (as they 
styled the views of the Reformers,) would 
arise to trouble the (Romish) church."* Ac- 
cordingly the only Bible to which our Catho- 
lic friends have access even at this day, 
by consent of their spiritual guides, is this 
corrupted translation, or translations of this 
translation, which after having been care- 
fully corrected, and pronounced immacu- 
late by pope Sixtus V. in 1590, was two 
years subsequently altered in about 2000 
places by pope Clement VIIL the changes 
in some cases affecting whole verses, and in 
many others giving a decidedly contradic- 
tory signification.! This translation more- 
over adds several entire books which do not 
belong to the word of God at all. And if 
it were in the power of the Roman pontiff 
and his priests to banish the genuine word 
of God from the world, they would gladly 

* Ibid, p. 52, 53. 

| Cramp's Textbook, p. 52. 



31 



do it. Else why are they so bitterly opposed 
to the operations of Protestant Bible Socie- 
ties, whose object is to place the word of 
God faithfully translated from the original, 
and without note or comment, into every 
family? Else how could the late pope Pius 
VII. in his reply to the inquiries of the Polish 
bishops, what course they should pursue in 
regard to Bible societies, use such language 
as this: "We have been truly shocked, 
(says his holiness,) at this crafty device, 
(namely the distribution of the word of God 
by these societies,) by which the very foun- 
dations of religion are undermined. For it 
is evident that the holy scriptures when cir- 
culated in the vulgar tongue, have through 
the temerity of men, produced more harm 
than benefit. Continue, therefore, diligently 
to warn the people entrusted to your care, 
that they fall not into the snares which are 
prepared for their everlasting ruin (or in 
other words, that they receive not the Bible, 
offered them by these societies!")* Ought 
not every enlightened Catholic to suspect 

* Protestant, Vol. i. pp. 256-258. 



32 



either the capacity or fidelity of those reli- 
gious teachers, who are afraid to let the doc- 
trines which they teach as the truth of God, 
be tested by the word of God 1 

How different is the conduct of Protestant 
ministers ! How different the state of things 
in Protestant churches ! Since the glorious 
Reformation, the original scriptures are the 
text-book in the studies of ministers, and are 
accessible to all of every profession who are 
versed in the languages in which they are 
written. They have been faithfully trans- 
lated into all the different languages of 
Christendom, and into a vast multitude of 
heathen tongues, and distributed in millions 
of copies throughout the countries of the 
Reformation. The Protestant minister is 
confessedly the expounder of the word of 
God, the Protestant layman is taught to 
search the scriptures like the nobler Re- 
reans, to " see whether these things be so." 
The grand, the cardinal principle of both is, 
" the Bible, the Bible is the religion of Pro- 
testants!" Fellow-Christian, do you triumph 
in the conviction that the criteria by which 
you judge your hopes of eternal life, are 



33 



based not on the ipse dixit of popes and 
councils, nor on the uncertain tradition of 
fallible men, but on the infallible word of 
God ? Remember you are indebted for this 
privilege to the blessed Reformation, and let 
your gratitude ascend to heaven for this fa- 
vour! Do you make that word the man of 
your counsel, and the guide of your life ; in 
every time of doubt or difficulty do you seek 
instruction of God himself by resorting " to 
the law and the testimony ? Forget not that 
the Reformation conferred on you this de- 
lightful privilege. Does this word enable 
you daily to hold communion with those men 
of God, who wrote as the Holy Ghost in- 
spired? Do you peruse the predictions of 
the ancient prophets, or read the very letters 
which the apostles wrote to the first churches, 
thus enjoying the privileges of the primitive 
Christians ? Do you find the precious Bible 
evinced a book divine by its elevating, trans- 
forming, beatifying influence on your soul? 
Then forget not, that for all these high and 
holy privileges, your gratitude is due to the 
glorious Reformation by which God deli- 



34 

vered our fathers from papal darkness and 
superstition. 



II. The Reformation has delivered the church 
from a multitude of doctrinal and 'practical 
corruptions. 

Instead of worshipping God through the 
pretended mediation of angels, or the Virgin 
Mary, and other mortals termed saints, as is 
done even at this day in the Romish church, 
and offering to them a species of worship, Pro- 
testants have restored to them the privilege 
of worshiping God and him alone, through 
the divine Saviour. Pope Pius IV. whose 
creed is embraced in the standards of the 
whole Romish church, employs this revolting 
language expressive of the Catholic faith: *• I 
also believe that the saints who reign with 
Christ, are to be worshiped and prayed to"* 
The multitude of these pretended saints is 

* Creed of Pius IV. Art. 20. Concil. Trident. 
Sess. 25. de Invocat. Catechism. Rom. Part III. 
Ch. 2. 



35 



almost such, that no man can number them ; 
their works of piety and their stupendous 
miracles are treasured up in fifty-four folio 
volumes for the edification of the children of 
the holy mother church ! Some of these 
saints, it is believed, never existed on earth 
except in the imagination of the biographers 
who fabricated the legends of them. Such 
are Saint Longinus, who is said to have 
been the Roman soldier that pierced the 
spear into the Saviour's side on the cross ; 
the gigantic St. Christopher, who is reputed 
to have carried Christ across an arm of the 
sea; # St. Amphibolus, who was only the 
cloak of Albans, the British protomartyr ! !f 
Some of these saints were murderers, and 
traitors,J such as the murderers of the Hen- 
rys of France, of the Prince of Orange, and 
Garnet of the gunpowder plot.§ Others are 

* Home on Popery, p. 16. 

| Protestant, vol. i. p. 343. 

X Brownlee's Popery an Enemy, &c., 152-3. 

§ Of this desperate scheme of papal bigotry, Dr. 
Mosheim gives the following brief account : — " All 
the resources of inventive genius and refined policy, 
all the efforts of insinuating craft and audacious re» 



36 

by the best historians ranked among the most 
unprincipled, and notoriously corrupt sinners 
of their age. Such, to specify but one other, 
was Saint Gregory VII. named Hildebrand, 
of the eleventh century, who, in order to raise 

bellion, were employed to bring back Great Britain 
and Ireland under the yoke of Rome. But all these 
attempts were without effect. About the beginning 
of this century (1605) a set of desperate and execra- 
ble wretches, in whose breasts the suggestions of bi- 
gotry and the hatred of the Protestant religion had 
suppressed the feelings of justice and humanity, were 
instigated by three Jesuits, of whom Garnet, the su- 
perior of the Society in England, was the chief, to 
form the most horrid plot that is known in the annals 
of history. The design of this conspiracy was no- 
thing less than to destroy, at one blow, king James L, 
the prince of Wales, and both houses of Parliament, 
by the explosion of an immense quantity of gunpow- 
der (thirty barrels !) which they concealed for that 
purpose, in the vaults under the house of Lords. The 
sanguinary bigots concerned in it imagined, that, 
as soon as this horrible deed was performed, they 
would be at full liberty to restore popery to its former 
credit, and substitute it in place of the Protestant re- 
ligion. This odious conspiracy, which was provi- 
dentially discovered, when it was rife for execution, 
is commonly known in Britain under the denomination 
of the Gunpowder treason ." — Vol. iii. p. 463—464. 



37 

the church above all human authority, to se« 
parate the clergy from all those social ties 
by which they were united to the people, and 
to convert them into a kind of standing army, 
whose entire interest it w r ould be to obey im- 
plicitly the papal mandate, forcibly intro- 
duced the oft-attempted, and commended 
celibacy of the clergy, thus impiously de- 
nouncing the matrimonial relation, and sepa- 
rating hundreds of husbands from their law- 
ful wives, fathers from their children, whilst 
it is notorious that he himself was living in 
illicit amours with Matilda, a very opulent 
and powerful Italian princess.* What wor- 
shiper of the true God can reflect without 
horror on the idea of paying religious vene- 
ration to such monsters of iniquity ! As 
well might we return to the era of Pagan 
Rome, and unite in the worship of her Jupi- 
ter and Juno, her Venus, and her Mars ! But 
blessed be God, the Reformation has restored 
to us the primitive and precious doctrines 01 
the gospel, has taught us " that there is but 
one God, and one mediator between God and 

* Mosheim, Hist. 11th Cent. 
4 



S8 

man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself 
a ransom for all."* Neither is there salva- 
tion in any other, for there is no other name 
under heaven given among men, whereby 
we must be saved.f Blessed be God, we 
now know, that " if any man sin, we have 
an advocate with the Father," who is, not 
the Virgin Mary, nor an angel, nor a real, 
or pretended saint, but is "Jesus Christ the 
righteous, who is the propitiation for our 
sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins 
of the whole world."J Instead of believing 
that " the s;ood works of believers are trulv 
and properly meritorious, and fully worthy 
of eternal life ;"§ the Reformation, by re- 
storing to us the good word of God, has 
taught us to despair of the filthy rags of our 
own righteousness, to believe that " by grace . 
we are saved, through faith, and that not of 
ourselves ; it is the gift of God ; not of works, 
lest any man should boast."|| 

Instead of the mutilated and corrupted sa- 

'.* 1 Tim. 2: 5, G. f Acts 4: 12. % 1 John 2: 1, 2. 
§ Con.Tridd. Sess. 6. chap. 16. Can. 32. 

|| Ephes. 2: 8, 9. 



39 

craments of the Romish church, the Refor- 
mation has restored to us the primitive, sim- 
ple ordinances of the gospel. The papal 
priests refuse to give the cup to the laity, 
whilst the Saviour gave it to all, and as if 
foreseeing the corruptions of after ages, added 
the express injunction : " drink ye all of this 
cup:" for he appended no such injunction in 
reference to the bread. The Romish church 
believe that the bread and wine in the eu- 
charist are no longer bread and wine, but 
are converted by the consecration of the 
priest into the real material body and blood 
of the Saviour, a doctrine contradicted by 
common sense, refuted by the concurrent 
testimony of all our senses of touch, of taste, 
of smell and of sight. The Reformation has 
taught us to regard the ordinance not as a 
renewed sacrifice or mass ; but as a mnemo- 
nic ordinance to commemorate the dying 
love of the Saviour, and to serve as a pledge 
of his spiritual presence and blessing on all 
worthy participants. The Romish church 
has also, since the days of Peter Lombard, 
in the twelfth century, added five other sa- 
craments to the two instituted by our Lord, 



40 



viz., Confirmation, (Protestants do not hold 
confirmation as a sacrament) Penance, Or- 
ders, Matrimony and Extreme Unction. 

Instead of vainly seeking remission of sins 
from priests and papal indulgences, the Re- 
formation has taught us that " no man can 
forgive sin but God only"* and that none but 
"the Son of man hath power on earth to for- 
give sin."f The Romish pope had not only 
attempted to wrest this prerogative from the 
God of heaven ;J but had actually converted 
his pretended power into an ordinary article 
of merchandise ; had published to the papal 
world a tariff of human crimes, affixing to 
each the price for which it would certainly 
be pardoned, or rather, as it may be styled, 
the expense at which it might be commit- 
ted ! ! This power of selling indulgences was 
not even claimed by the popes prior to the 
twelfth century, much less was it granted 
them by the Saviour. It was doubtless and 
still is one of the most fearful, soul-destroy- 

* Mark 2: 7. f Luke 5: 21. 

± The decree of the Council of Trent explicitly de- 
cides, that priests forgive sins judicially and not de- 
claratively. 



41 



ing corruptions of Christianity ever perpe- 
trated on earth. It made it the interest of 
pope and priest, that men should commit 
crimes frequently and continually. The more 
vicious and corrupt the people, the greater 
the profits of the priests. It is obvious that 
in the hands of a priesthood sufficiently igno- 
rant of God's word, sufficiently licentious, 
and destitute of spirituality to practise such 
a system, it must have a powerful tendency 
to obliterate from the popular mind all just 
sense of the guilt of sin, all conviction of 
what rendered the psalmist's transgressions 
most painful to him, " against thee, thee only 
have I sinned, and done this evil in thy 
sight." 

Let it not be imagined that this soul-de- 
stroying practice belonged only to the dark 
ages. Even at this day as travellers inform 
us, advertisements are put up in different ca- 
tholic countries of Europe, directing the vic- 
tim of priestly deception whither to bear his 
money in order to barter it for indulgences ! ! 
No longer than the 24th of May, 1824, did 
Pope Leo XII. himself issue a bull, pledging 
" the most plenary, and complete indulgence, 
4* 



42 

remission and pardon of all their sins," to 
such as during the ensuing year of Jubilee, 
would visit the churches of Rome and per- 
form the prescribed ceremonies there!! 

Instead of a professed celibacy of the priests 
and nuns, accompanied by the most appal- 
ling scenes of licentiousness and moral pol- 
lution, the Reformation, through the Scrip- 
tures, has again taught the church, that mar- 
riage is an ordinance of God, " is honour- 
able in all," both priests and nuns, and is 
favourable in its tendency to chastity and 
every moral virtue. When we hear the 
Apostle Paul inculcating that a bishop, or 
minister, should be blameless, the husband of 
one wife ; # when we remember too that the 
apostle Peter, whom the Romanists are prone 
to cite as the first pope, was a married man;"\ 
it is amazing that a church professing to fol- 
low the instructions of Christ and his apos- 
tles, could so directly in the face of the 
Scriptures, denounce what God enjoined, 
and even enact laws of absolute prohibition 

* 1 Tim. 3: 2 ; see also Titus I: 8. 
| Matt. 8: 14. Luke 4: .38. 



43 



against those of the priesthood, who wished 
to honour the institution which God appoint- 
ed. But in reality the sacred volume had for 
ages before the Reformation been virtually 
suppressed, and the corrupt system of popery 
had gradually grown up whilst the Bible was 
really unknown to the priests and withheld 
from the people. Attempts were made in the 
earlier ages of Christianity, long before the 
existence of the papal hierarchy, to enjoin 
celibacy on the priesthood. The council of 
Nice, however, A. D. 325, through the influ- 
ence of a celebrated Christian sufferer, the 
one-eyed Paphnutius,* rejected the growing 
error. But that memorable century had not 
been closed when the bishop of Rome, Siri- 
cius (A. D. 385) and soon after several 
Western Synods, enjoined it with some suc- 
cess. The principal circumstance which in- 
troduced celibacy among the ministry at that 
time was, that it became customary to elect 

* Socratis Histor. Lib. i. chap. 8. This cele- 
brated man had one of his eyes bored out in the per- 
secutions, and so much was he esteemed and beloved 
by the emperor Constantine, that he is said often to 
have kissed the extinguished eye. 



44 

monks to the pastoral charge of churches, 
so that the monastic life began to be regard- 
ed as preparation for the ministry, and as 
monks had vowed celibacy, the matrimonial 
state was discouraged among the clergy, but 
could not be generally suppressed even in 
the Latin church, until the time of Gregory 
VII. in the 11th century. 

The natural consequences of this perver- 
sion of God's appointed laws, soon became 
manifest in the appalling scenes of corrup- 
tion and licentiousness, in which, according 
to contemporaneous Catholic writers, monks 
and nuns, priests, bishops and popes were 
alike implicated ! 

* [At an early day after the introduction of 
celibacy it became customary for the priests 
to keep single females in their houses as pro- 
fessed religious sisters.f To suppress the dis- 
orders thus introduced by these pretended 
friends of celibacy, it was found necessary to 
prohibit the priests from having any females 

* The paragraph included in [ ] was omitted in the 
delivery. 

f The mulieres siibintroductce* See Gieseler, voL 
i., and Mosheim, vol. i. 



45 

in their houses, except their own mothers 
and sisters. But horrible to relate, from a 
decree of the Concil. Moguntise, A. D. 888, 
we learn that some of them had children by 
their oton sisters !* By a canon of the Con- 
cil. iEnhamense, A. D. 1009, it is expressly 
asserted, that some of them had not only one, 
but even two and more women living with 
them ; that their voluptuous indulgences con- 
stituted their principal object of pursuit in 
life ; and that they did not blush to be en- 
gaged with prostitutes, even more publicly, 
more ostentatiously, more lasciviously and 
more perseveringly than the most unprinci- 
pled vagrants " among the laity. "f Hundreds 
of thousands of voung females were enticed 
into their nunneries under pretence of spend- 
ing their life in religious seclusion. These 
nunneries were almost invariably in the im- 
mediate vicinity of the institutions of the 
priests : and in different instances, where 

* Canon 10, Mansi xviii. p. 67. See Gieseler's 
Hist. vol. ii. p. 112. 

f Gieseler's History, Amer. ed., 1836. Vol. ii. p. 
112. Oranes Dei ministros, &c. See also, pp. 114, 
276. 



46 

these establishments were torn down, sub- 
terranean passages were discovered con- 
ducting from the one to the other!! Cle- 
mangis, a distinguished French catholic, who 
studied at Paris under the learned Gerson, 
and lived about fifty years before the time 
of Luther, gives such a description of the 
nunneries as cannot be repeated at large be- 
fore this audience. After enumerating va- 
rious particulars, he adds, " What else are 
these nunneries than houses of prostitution? 
so that in our day for a female to take the 
veil, is the same as publicly to offer herself 
for prostitution.* Geo. Cassander, a Catho- 
lic writer, born a few years before the Refor- 
mation, testifies " that scarcely one could be 
found in a hundred of the priests who was 
not guilty of illicit commerce with females."f 
Many of the popes were among the most 
licentious and corrupt men to be found in 
the annals of human debauchery ,J and Pope 

* M'Gavin's Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 718. 

f Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 718 ; also Murdock's Mo- 
sheim, Vol. ii. p. 71. 

X Examples of such popes may be found in 
M'Gavin's Protestant, Vol. ii. pp. 27, 28. 



47 

Paul III. even licensed brothels, for a regu- 
lar sum of money.*] 

Such according to the testimony of Ro- 
mish writers themselves, was the condition 
of the church prior to the Reformation ! 
What gratitude is not due from every friend 
of virtue or religion, that these corruptions 
have been banished from, at least a large 
portion of the Christian world. What gra- 
titude is due from every father and mother, 
that our eyes have been opened upon the 
corruption of these nunneries, that our 
daughters are no longer sent thither to be 
sacrificeed to licentious priests ! With what 
gratitude should we cherish the recollection 
of the glorious Reformation ! and how faith- 
fully should we labour by the dissemination 
of the word of God and of the spirit of piety 

* " In the third year of his papacy, Paul III. 
granted a bull for publicly licensing- brothels, and 
gave an indulgence for the commission of lewdness, 
provided the man paid a certain fine to the holy see, 
and the woman a yearly sum for her license, and 
entered her name into the public register. In the 
days of this pope, there are said to have been 45,000 
such women in Rome." — Protestant, Vol. i. p. 141. 



48 

among our fellow citizens of all descriptions 
to resist the progress of popery amongst us! 
But may we not in charity doubt the jus- 
tice of the inference from the character of 
the Romish institutions and priesthood of 
former ages, to those of the present day? 
Has not the Romish church itself been re- 
formed by the strea ms of light thrown around 
her by the Reformation ? With sincere de- 
light and with gratitude to God would we 
adopt this opinion in all its latitude, if truth 
permitted us. Some effect the Reformation 
has doubtless exerted on the Roman Catho- 
lic church. In Protestant countries and es- 
pecially in our own land, the native Catholic 
laymen are in general as moral as the mass 
of the community around them, and their 
priests generally observe external propriety 
of deportment. But that their monasteries 
and nunneries in Catholic countries are still 
nearly as corrupt as ever, and that the celi- 
bacy of the monks and priests leads to the 
same licentiousness of practice ; is evident 
from undeniable authority, from the testi- 
mony of Romanists themselves ! ! Scipio de 
Ricci, a bigoted Roman bishop, but a good 



49 



man, being employed by the Duke of Tusca- 
ny to reform the nunneries in that territory, 
visited these institutions, and presented to 
the pope the most revolting picture of these 
sinks of corruption.* The character of 

* " The vicar of Prato, Lorenzo Palli, being inter- 
rogated (by Ricci) answered that the nuns believed 
neither the sacraments of the church, nor the eternity 
of another life ; that they denied certain criminal ac- 
tions to be sins, and especially those of the flesh." 

" The disorders discovered at Prato, were only the 
sequel of those which the government had rooted otit 
of the convents of Pistoria. In two letters of Flavia 
Peraccini, Prioress of Catherine of Pistoria, to Com- 
parini, rector of the episcopal seminary in the same 
city, the nun relates what passed before her eyes in 
her own convent, what had passed there before she 
wrote, and what still continued to take place in other 
convents, particularly at Prato." 

"It would require both time and memory, (she 
says) to recollect what has occurred during the twen- 
ty-four years that I have had to do with monks, and 
all that I have heard tell of them. Of those who are 
gone to the other world, I shall say nothing ; of those 
who are still alive, and have little decency of con- 
duct, there are very many." " With the exception 

of three or four, all that I ever knew, alive or dead, 

are of the same character ; they have all the same 

maxims and the same conduct* They are on more 

5 



50 

these establishments in South America and 
the Spanish West Indies is equally notori- 

intijnate terms with the nuns than if they were mar' 
ried to them" 

" It is the custom now, that, when they come to 
visit any sick sister, they sup with the nuns, they 
sing, dance, play and sleep in the convent. It is a 
maxim of theirs, that God has forbidden hatred but 
not love; and that the man is made for the woman, 
and the woman for the man. They teach us to amuse 
ourselves, saying, that Paul said the same, who 
wrought with his own hands. They deceive the in- 
nocent, and even those that are most circumspect ; and 
it would need a miracle to converse with them and not 
fall. The priests are the husbands of the nuns, and 
the lay brothers of the lay sisters. In the chamber of 
one of those I have mentioned, a man was one day 
found ; he fled ; but very soon after they gave him to 

us as confessor extraordinary!" "The monks 

have never done any thing to me personally to make 
me dislike them ; but I will say that so iniquitous a 
race as the monks nowhere exists. Bad as the secu- 
lars are, they do not at all come up to them ; and the 
art of the monks with the world and their superiors 
baffles description." " When they gave us the ho- 
ly water every year, they threw every thing, even the 
beds, into disorder. What a racket they used to 
make ! One time they washed father Manni's face 
and dressed him like a nun. In short, it was a per* 



51 



ous:* and God in his inscrutable providence 
has within late years granted us by the tes- 

petual scene of amusements, comedies and conversa- 
tion for ever. Every monk who passed by on his 
way to the chapter, they found some means of show- 
ing into the convent, and entreated a sick sister to 
confess herself. Everlasting- scandal about hus- 
bands — of those who had stolen the mistress of such 
a one ; how others had avenged themselves in the 
chapter; and how they would not have forgiven even 
in death." — " Do not suppose, {she says) that this is 
the case in our convent alone . It is just the same at 
Lucia, at Prato, at Pisa, at Perugia ; and I have 
heard things that would astonish you. Every w r here 
it is the same, every where the same disorders, every 
where the same abuses prevail." Let the reader re- 
member, that this is the testimony given by inmates 
of the nunneries, given to the Romish bishop, and 
sent by him to the pope Avith the prayer for reform ! 
No Protestant had any hand in it. But instead of 
effecting reform, De Ricci was persecuted and dis- 
graced for publishing the truth to the world ! ! ! See 
The Secrets of Nunneries Disclosed, compiled from 
the autograph manuscripts of Scipio De Ricei, Ro- 
man Catholic bishop of Pistoria and Prato, by Mr. De 
Potter. Edited by Thomas Roscoe, Abridged, pp. 
91—94. Published by D. Appleton & Co. No. 200 
Broadway, New York, 1834. 

* According to St. Ligori, who was the author of 



52 



timony of other witnesses beside Maria 
Monk, the most appalling disclosures of mid- 

the most modern system of theology published by the 
papists, and was canonized by Pope Pius VII. in 
1816, the council of Trent made regular and standing 
provision for mulcting those priests who keep concu- 
bines ! ! " A bishop (he says) however poor he may 
be, cannot appropriate to himself pecuniary fines with- 
out the license of the apostolic see. But he ought to 
apply them to pious uses. Much less can he apply 
those fines to any thing else but pious uses, which 
the council of Trent has laid upon non-resident clergy- 
men, or upon those clergymen who keep concubines." 
Ligori, Ep. Doc. Mor. p. 444, as translated by Mr. 
Smith, late a popish priest, in his Synopsis of Moral 
Theology, taken from Ligori, published in New York, 
in 1836. 

" How shameful a thing, (says Mr. Smith) that the 
apostolic see, as they call it, that is, the Pope of Rome, 
should enrich his coffers by the fines which he re- 
ceives from the profligacy of his clergy ! Tf they 
keep concubines, they must pay a fine for it, but if 
they marry, they must be excommunicated ! This 
accounts at once for the custom in Spain, and other 
countries, and especially on the island of Cuba, and 
in South America; where almost every priest has 
concubines, who are known by the name of nieces. — 
The " Narrative of Rosamond," who was once her- 
self one of these concubines, in the island of Cuba, 



53 

night scenes of debauchery, of deception, of 
cruelty, which are transacted in a nunnery 

portrays the general licentiousness of the Popish cler- 
gy in colours so shocking, that the picture cannot be 
looked at without a blush. Here we see the doctrine 
fully exemplified by practice. This keeping of con- 
cubines is a thing so common in the Popish West 
India Islands, and in South America, that it is rarely 
noticed." See Smith's Synopsis of Ligori, p. 296, 
297. 

St. Ligori himself asserts a fact which, as Mr. 
Smith justly observes, strongly corroborates the Re- 
velations of Maria Monk; namely, that refractory, 
incorrigible nuns are punished by imprisonment for 
life, " A nun (says he) who is guilty of a grievous 
or pernicious crime, and who appears to be notori- 
ously incorrigible is to be confined in perpetual im- 
prisonment" But they are not expelled as some 
monks are. The reason is obvious. Nuns, if ex- 
pelled, would reyeal the licentious and brutal treat- 
ment they had received from the priests, whilst the 
latter would be careful not to inform on themselves. 
Smith's Synopsis of Ligori's Moral Theology, p. 231, 
232. Now let it be remembered, that the writings of 
Ligori were approved by Pope Pius VII. and by the 
Sacred Congregation of Rites so late as 1816: and 
that, as Dr. Varela, the priest of New York asserted 
three years ago, are in the hands of almost every 
priest, and therefore also of those at Montreal, and 
5* 



54 

on the borders of our own country, as if to 
warn the citizens of this republic in time to 

there will be nothing incredible in the following nar- 
rative of Maria Monk. St. Ligori himself testifies, 
that nuns are thus imprisoned for life. Maria Monk, 
p. 138—142, 2d edit, says, 

" I continued to visit the cellar frequently, to carry 
up coal for the fires, without any thing more than a 
general impression that there were two nuns some- 
where imprisoned in it. One day while there on my 
usual errand, I saw a nun standing on the right of the 
cellar, in front of one of the cell doors I had before ob- 
served; she was apparently engaged with something 
within. This attracted my attention. The door ap- 
peared to close in a small recess, and was fastened 
with a stout iron bolt on the outside, the end of which 
was secured by being let into a hole in the stone-work 
which formed the posts. The door which was of 
wood, was sunk a few inches beyond the stone-work, 
which rose and formed an arch over head. Above the 
bolt was a small window supplied with a fine grating, 
which swung open, a small bolt having been removed 
from it, on the outside. The nun I had observed 
seemed to be whispering with some person within, 
through the little window : but I hastened to get my 
coal, and left the cellar, presuming that was the prison. 
When I visited the place again, being alone, I ven- 
tured to the spot, determined to learn the truth, pre- 
suming that the imprisoned nuns of whom the Supe- 



55 



guard against the inroads of the destroyer. 
Indeed, incredible as it might seem, from the 

lior had told me on my admission, were confined 
there. I spoke at the window where I had seen the 
nun standing, and heard a voice reply in a whisper. 
The aperture was so small, and the place so dark, 
that I could see nobody; but I learnt that a poor 
wretch was confined there a prisoner. I feared that 
I might be discovered, and after a few words, which 
I thought could do no harm, I withdrew. 

" My curiosity was now alive, to learn every thing 
I could about so mysterious a subject. I made a few 
inquiries of Saint Xavier, who only informed me that 
they were punished for refusing to obey the Superior, 
Bishop, and Priests. I afterward found that the other 
nuns were acquainted with the fact I had just disco- 
vered. All I could learn, however, was, that the pri- 
soner in the cell whom I had spoken with, and another 
in the cell just beyond, had been confined there several 
years without having been taken out; but their names, 
connections, offences, and every thing else relating to 
them, I could never learn, and am still as ignorant as 
ever. Some conjectured that they had refused to 
comply with some of the rules of the convent, or re- 
quisitions of the Superior: others, that they were 
heiresses whose property was desired for the convent, 
and who would not consent to sign deeds of it. Some 
of the nuns informed me, that the severest of their 
sufferings arose from fear of supernatural beings. 



56 



questions which females are required to an- 
swer according to their own published di- 

" 1 often spoke with one of them in passing near 
their cells, when on errands in the cellar, hut never 
ventured to stop long-, or to press my inquiries very 
far. Besides, I found her reserved, and little disposed 
to converse freely, a thing I could not wonder at 
when I considered her situation, and the characters 
of persons around her. She spoke like a woman in 
feeble health, and of broken spirits. I occasionally 
saw other nuns speaking to them, particularly at 
meal-times, when they were regularly furnished with 
food, which was such as we ourselves ate. 

" Their cells were occasionally cleaned, and then 
the doors were opened. I never looked into them, 
but was informed that the ground was their only 
floor. I presumed that they were furnished with 
straw to lie upon, as I always saw a quantity of old 
straw scattered about that part of the cellar, after the 
cells had been cleansed. I once inquired of one of 
them, whether they could converse together, and she 
replied that they could, through a small opening be- 
tween their cells, which I could not see. 

" I once inquired of the one I spoke with in passing, 
whether she wanted any thing, and she replied, " Tell 
Jane Ray I w r ant to see her a moment if she can slip 
away." When I went up I took an opportunity to 
deliver my message to Jane, who concerted with me 
a signal to be used in future, in case a similar request 



57 

rectory, it is evident that even in these 
United States, the intercourse of the priests 

should be made through me. This was a sly wink 
at her with one eye, accompanied with a slight toss 
of my head. She then sought an opportunity to visit 
the cellar, and was soon able to hold an interview 
with the poor prisoners, without being noticed by 
any one but myself. I afterward learnt that mad 
Jane Ray was not so mad, but she could feel for 
those miserable beings, and carry through measures 
for their comfort. She would often visit them with 
sympathizing words, and, when necessary, conceal 
part of her food while at table, and secretly convey 
it into their dungeons. Sometimes we would com- 
bine for such an object; and I have repeatedly aided 
her in thus obtaining a larger supply of food than 
they had been able to obtain from others. 

44 1 frequently thought of the two nuns confined in 
the cells, and occasionally heard something said about 
them, but very little. Whenever I visited the cellar, 
and thought it safe, I went up to the first of them, 
and spoke a word or two, and usually got some brief 
reply, without ascertaining that any particular change 
took place with either of them. The one with whom 
alone I ever conversed, spoke English perfectly well, 
and French I thought as well. I supposed she must 
have been well educated, for I could not tell which 
was her native language. I remember that she fre- 
quently used these words when I wished to say more 



58 



and females at the confessional is such as no 
virtuous father or husband ought to permit, 
such as no wife or daughter ought to hear 
without feeling insulted.* They are too ob- 

to her, and which alone showed that she was con- 
stantly afraid of punishment : " Oh, there's somebody 
coming — do go away !" I have been told that the 
other prisoner also spoke English. 

"It was impossible for me to form any certain 
opinion about the size or appearance of those two 
miserable creatures, for their cells were perfectly 
dark, and I never caught the slightest glimpse even 
of their faces. It is probable they were women not 
above the middle size, and my reason for this pre- 
sumption is the following: I was sometimes appointed 
to lay out the clean clothes for all the nuns in the 
Convent on Saturday evening, and was always di- 
rected to lay by two suits for the prisoners. Parti- 
cular orders were given to select the largest sized 
garments for several tall nuns; but nothing of the 
kind was ever said in relation to the clothes of those 
in the cells." 

* The ensuing " examination of conscience," as it 
is termed, is extracted from the Catholic's Manual, 
a volume issued by John Power, the popish vicar 
general of New York, pp. 289, 290, 291. Persons 
going to confession, are required to state whether 
they have committed the following sins, viz. — " Sins 



59 



scene to be publicly repeated before a pro- 
miscuous assembly. What an invaluable ser- 

against ourselves by impurity. 1. In thoughts: in 
"wilfully dwelling- upon or taking- pleasure in unchaste 
thoughts. It must be mentioned how long, whether 
with desires of committing evil ; whether they caused 
irregular motions, and in a holy place — and whether 
the objects of sinful desires were single or married, 
persons, or persons consecrated to God (that is, the 
priest himself !) 2. In words. Speaking obscenely, 
listening with pleasure to such vile language, singing 
unchaste songs, giving toasts and sentiments contrary 
to modesty. 3. In looks. Viewing immodest objects ; 
reading bad books ; keeping indecent pictures ; fre- 
quenting plays, and tempting others to sin by disso- 
lute glances, gestures, and immodesty in dress or be- 
haviour. 4. In actions. Defiling the sanctity of mar- 
riage by shameful liberties contrary to nature ; in 
touching ourselves or others immodestly, or permit- 
ting such base liberties. Certain sins of a lonely 
and abominable nature. What were the consequences 
of these sinful impurities 1 explain every thing — the 
number of these bad actions, the length of time conti- 
nued in the habit, and with whom we sinned." — 
Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 726, Hartford ed. of 1833. 

Of similarly obscene character, though not quite so 
much in detail, are the questions published in Phila- 
delphia, under the sanction of Mr. Kendrick, the Ro- 
man prelate of that city, in the Key of Paradise, p. 



60 

vice have not the blessed reformers rendered 
to the cause of religion, of moral purity, of 

115. Those in the " Pious Guide to Prayer," &c, 
used in Maryland, and published at Georgetown, 
1825, fourth edition, p. 145 to 148, embrace all the 
above questions, with additional intervening reflec- 
tions. 

Equally if not more indecent are the questions con- 
tained in a German work, republished in Baltimore, 
in 1830, and used at least by some German Catholics, 
to the writer's certain knowledge, in this country. It 
has the sanction of several Romish dignitaries in Eu- 
rope, and on the title page the impress "mit Erlaub- 
nisz der Obern," (sanctioned by the higher authori- 
ties.) This work, entitled, " Elsasisches Missions- 
biichlein," by a priest of the society of Jesuits, &c. 
&c, contains a mirror for the confessional (Beicht- 
spiegel,) and among many other questions similar to 
those of the New York directory, has the follow- 
ing : 

" If you are married, you must state, in open-hearted 
confession, every thing (touching this commandment, 
adultery, &c.) which you committed in single life; 
then also what sins you committed after your mar- 
riage, either with others or with your companion, 
inasmuch as not all things are allowed even to mar- 
ried persons. Do not forget to mention what may 
have taken place between the time of your engage- 
ment and your actual marriage ; inasmuch as any 



61 

conjugal security, of social happiness, by 
banishing these corrupting doctrines and in- 

thing impure committed at that time is yet a mortal 
sin." 

" I have indulged in a criminal attachment. — Add 
how long." 

" I have been with persons of the other sex during 
the night — How often," &c. 

" I gave occasion to unchaste dreams — How of- 
ten," &c. 

" I have committed sins of impurity on my own 
person — How often," &c. 

" I gave unchaste kisses, or willingly received 
them — How often," &c. 

" I touched others unchastely, or permitted them 
to take such liberties with me — How often," &c. 

" I have sinned with persons of the other sex, by 
unehaste acts — How often," &c. 

" I have sinned against beasts, by licentious 
glances, or in another way — How often," &c. 

Such are the awfully obscene questions which are 
circulated by Romish priests among the people of 
every rank and age ; and about which, according to 
their own system, they must habitually converse with 
females, of every age, above twelve years ! ! Can 
any man doubt the debasing and demoralizing ten- 
dency of making such questions familiar to the minds 
of all sexes and ages, and of requiring females, on 
pain of perdition, statedly to talk with their priests 
6 



62 



stitutions, by removing the obscene and fil- 
thy practice of auricular confession to the 
priest,* and by restoring to us and ourfami- 

about them 1 The writer has had serious doubts of 
the propriety of presenting these questions to his Pro- 
testant readers even in a note ; and nothing could in- 
duce him to do it, but the extreme reluctance of the 
Protestant community to believe any mere abstract 
statements of the licentious character and tendency 
of the Romish religion. Surely, when the proofs 
are taken from their own manuals of worship, pub- 
lished by themselves, in our own country, by their own 
bishops, and used in our own neighbourhood, in their 
worship, it cannot any longer be said, that these 
charges are slanderous, or are applicable only to for- 
mer ages or other countries. 

But even these questions are not all. Will it be 
believed, that five times as many more, on this same 
filthy subject, many of them far more particular and 
obscene than these, are given as instruction to priests, 
in the Theology of Peter Dens, one of the latest sys- 
tems of Papal theology, republished at Dublin, in 
1832, with the sanction of the present Archbishop 
Murray ? It is now the text-book at the Theol. Se- 
minary at Maynooth, and has probably been studied 
by all the Irish priests, who have come amongst us. 
If any man should dispute the fact, we can show him 
the work ! 

* We subjoin the following melancholy and humi- 



63 

lies the pure and elevating doctrines of the 
gospel and the simple and holy practices of 
the primitive churches ! The Reformation 
has restored to us God's own word, which 

liating statements from an authentic and highly inte- 
resting work, written by a converted French priest, 
now in this country, translated by Mr. S. F. B. 
Morse, Professor in the New York University, en- 
titled, Confessions of a French Catholic Priest, p. 
103, &c. 

" Three great principles and tenets are the essence 
of confession. The first is, that the confessor is as 
God himself whose place he holds ; the second is, that 
nothing must be hid from the confessor, because God 
knows all, and his vicegerent must also know all; the 
third is, that a blind and most absolute obedience is 
owed to the confessor as to God himself Hence it is 
easy to see that Popery, by an abominable substitu- 
tion, makes man disappear as much as possible, and 
puts God himself in. the place of man. This idea, 
once deeply impressed in the mind of boys, from their 
childhood, strengthened all the tenets of the Catholic 
church in the confessional, in the catechism, in dis- 
courses, in books of piety, &c, it is not astonishing 
that such respect, veneration and obedience are paid 
to the confessor. The Protestant who reads the his- 
tory of my country, will cease to gaze with surprise 
at those facts (incredible, perhaps to him) of a con- 
fessor who orders his penitent to kill another man by 



64 

teaches us the sanctity of the marriage re- 
lation, teaches females as well as males to 
confess their sins not to the priest but to Him, 
who alone can pardon them, to God ; which 

the command of the Lord. When a confessor or- 
dered the fanatic and deluded Clement to kill his king, 
Henry III., the order was from God. When Damiens 
stabbed Louis XV., the order was from God. When 
the confessor of Louis XIV. ordered him to revoke 
the edict of Nantes, the order was from God. 

" But it would be quite useless to give any more 
particular examples, since, according to the true spi- 
rit of confession, there is not a single crime which, 
looked at in the light of theology, cannot, must not, 
be advised and ordered by the confessor; above all, 
for the advantage of the Catholic church. When a 
man acts for this end, he cannot sin ; for, as it is said 
among priests, * the end sanctifies the means.'* This 
is the key-stone to the Romish edifice ; and the 
priest, feeling his human weakness, has called the 
name of God to his help, to strengthen his feebleness, 
to authorise his errors, to sanctify his crimes. — I have 
confessed priests and laymen of every description, a 
bishop (once), superiors, curates, persons high and 
low, women, girls, boys. I am, therefore, fitted to 
speak of the confessional. 

" The confession of men is a matter of high im- 
portance in political matters, to impress their minds 
with slavish ideas. As for other matters, confessors 



G5 

inculcates a standard of moral purity, and 
of female delicacy, such as would make a 
Protestant lady shrink with detestation from 
such questions, as according to their own 
directory, even every American catholic 

endeavour to give a high opinion of their own holi- 
ness to fathers and husbands, that they may be in- 
duced to send to the confessional, without any fear, 
their wives and daughters. Because, doubtless, should 
fathers and husbands know what passes at the con- 
fession-box between the holy man and their wives 
and daughters, they never would permit them again 
to goto those schools of vice. But priests command 
most carefully to women never to speak of their con- 
fession to men, and they inquire severely about that 
in every confession. 

" The confession of the female sex is the great 
triumph, the most splendid theatre of priests. Here 
is completed the work which is but begun through 
all their intercourse with women ; for all our rela- 
tions with them begin from their birth and continue 
till their death. In their baptism we sprinkle their 
heads with holy water, at their death, their grave; 
and the space comprised between these two epochs 
is rilled by a thousand ecclesiastical duties. The 
more I think of this matter, the more I remember 
this sentence — * Priests, in taking the vows of re- 
nouncing marriage, engage themselves to take the 
wives of others.' 

6 



66 



female must converse about to her priest at 
confession. 



III. The Reformation has given us liberty 
of conscience, and freedom from religious 
persecution. ^ 

Prior to the Reformation the corruption 
and tyranny and usurpations of the Romish 

" As soon as the young girl, for I speak peculiarly 
of their confession, enters the confessional, * Bless 
me, father,' she says, kneeling and crossing herself, 
4 for I have sinned ;' and the priest mumbles ' Domi- 
nus sit in ore tuo et in corde tuo ut, confitearis omnia 
peccata tua/ — ' The Lord be in your heart and lips, 
that you may confess all your sins.' If she is an 
ugly, common country girl or woman, she is soon 
despatched ; but, on the contrary, if she is pretty and 
fair, the holy father puts himself at ease, he examines 
her in the most secret recesses of her soul, he unfolds 
her mind in every sense, in every manner, upon every 
matter. This is the way which Theology recom- 
mends us to follow in our interrogations : ' Daughter, 
have you had bad thoughts ] On what subject 1 how 
often 1 &c. * Have you had bad desires ; what de- 
sires 1 Have you committed bad actions ; with whom ; 
what actions V &c. I am obliged to stop. Many 



67 

church had risen to such a height, that the 
people were not only denied access to the 
word of their God ; but they were even 
taught not to think for themselves at all in 
matters of religion, to surrender their judg- 

times the poor ashamed girl does not dare answer the 
questions, they are so indecent. In that case the holy 
man, ceasing his interrogations, says to her, * Listen, 
daughter, to the true doctrine of the church ; you 
must confess the truth, all the truth, to your spiritual 
father. Do you not know that I am in the place of 
God, that you cannot deceive him 1 Speak then ; re- 
veal your heart to me as God knows it ; you will he 
very glad when you will have discharged this burden 
from your mind. Will you not]' — ' Yes.'- — ' Begin, 
I will help you;' and then begins such a diabolical 
explanation as is not to be found but in houses of in- 
famy, I suppose, or in our theological books. This 
is so well known, that I have often heard of wicked 
young men saying to each other, i Come, let us go to 
confession, and the curate will teach us a great many 
corrupt things which we never knew ;' and many 
young girls have told rae in confession, that in order 
to become acquainted with details on those matters 
pleasing to their corrupt nature, they went purposely 
to the confessional to speak about it with their spiri- 
tual father. Sometimes I have heard the confession 
of young girls not above sixteen years of age, who 
explained to me such disgusting things with a preci- 



68 

merit implicitly to the priests, and believe 
as holy mother church believes* The princi- 
ple on which every true Romanist is required 
to act, is thus expressed by pope Pius in his 
Creed : " I also profess and undoubtedly re- 

sion, a propriety (or rather impropriety) of terms* 
that when I asked them where they had gathered all 
this strange learning, they seemed as much astonished 
at my question as I was at their confession ; and said 
tome;' Why, father, our former confessor taught us 
all this, and commanded us never to omit these de- 
tails, otherwise we should be damned.' I replied to 
them : ' I pray you never use such terms again, they 
are unworthy of a Christian mouth, you have misun~ 
derstood your confessor.' I learned afterwards that 
these misguided persons left my confessional, be- 
cause they said I was an ignorant confessor, who did 
not confess like others, and ivho did not cause them 
to say all!" 

" After so many instructions, the young girl is 
well indoctrinated, well fitted to answer either the 
questions or the purposes of the priest. This poison 
diffused in her heart soon infects her whole mind and 
destroys her purity. It is precisely at such a point 
of time that her cruel foe waits for her. When he 
sees that she is made vicious and corrupt by the 
teachings of the confessional, he is sure of his 
success." 

[The modes by which the priest persuades his vie- 






69 

ceive all other things delivered, defined and 
declared by the sacred canons, and general 
councils, and particularly by the holy coun- 
cil of Trent ; and likewise I also condemn, 
reject and anathematize all things contrary 
thereto and all heresies whatsoever, con- 
demned, rejected and anathematized by the 
church."* The laity are therefore not per- 
mitted to imitate the noble Bereans, who 
searched the Scriptures daily; they are even 
prohibited to a certain extent by their own 

tim that she is without sin in doing whatever he com- 
mands, since he is responsible, and since he can 
absolve her from it, and other means of deceiving at 
the confessional, are then too graphically related to be 
publicly told ; and I have thought it best, says the 
translator, Professor Morse, with the consent of the 
author, to suppress all but the closing facts.] 

" The truth is, that some cunning priests have a 
seraglio like that of the Sultan, and it is by no means 
an easy task for him to conceal his favourites from 
each other, because he says to each that she is his 
only mistress. It would be easy for me to enlarge on 
this point, and to give other details, but these I hope 
will suffice ; perhaps they are already too many." — 
P. 106. 112. 

* Cramp's Textbook, p. 389. 



70 



priests from obeying the precept of the Sa- 
vour: Search the Scriptures, for in them ye 
think ye have eternal life, and they are they 
which testify of me. Nay even in our midst, 
Romanists are not permitted to read the 
miscellaneous literature of their age and na- 
tion. The freedom of the press is suppressed 
in every country on earth, where popery has 
power to control it. Nor could any other 
event be expected in our own country, if 
Romanists should gain the ascendency; for 
this is one of the acknowledged, unaltered 
and unalterable principles of their church. 
Here let our newspaper editors learn what 
awaits them, if they do not in time impar- 
tially examine the true politico-religious cha- 
racter of Romanism, and duly instruct the 
popular mind on this subject. Its very es- 
sence is an admixture of civil and religious 
despotism, and the certain ultimate result of 
its preponderance must be a union of church 
and state on anti-republican principles. Lis- 
ten to the testimony of the papists them- 
selves. " The pope and emperor ought to 
be implicitly obeyed ; the heretic's books 
burned, and the printers and sellers of them 



71 

duly punished. There is no other way to 
suppress and extinguish the pernicious sect 
of Protestants." Thus said the legate of Pope 
Adrian VI. to the diet of Nuremberg. A 
decree of the Lateran council held in 1515, 
determines in substance, "that no book shall 
be printed without the bishop's license ; that 
those who transgressed this decree shall for- 
feit the whole impression, which shall be 
publicly burned ; pay a fine of one hundred 
ducats ; be suspended from his business for 
one year, and be excommunicated ; that is, 
given over to the devil, soul and body in 
God's name and the saints !" The celebrated 
council of Trent whose decrees are acknow- 
ledged by all Catholics, decided that " being 
desirous of setting bounds to the printers, 
who with unlimited boldness, supposing them- 
selves at liberty to do as they please, print 
editions of the Holy Bible with notes and 
expositions, taken indifferently from any 
writer, without the permission of their eccle- 
siastical superiors, &c. Neither shall any 
one hereafter sell such books, or even retain 
them in his possession, unless they have been 
first examined and approved by the ordinary 



72 

under penalty of anathema, and the pecu- 
niary fine adjudged by the last council of 
Lateran" (that above mentioned).* And with 
a candour truly commendable, which puts to 
shame those Protestants who insist on be- 
lieving modern popery to be different from 
that of former ages, Pope Gregory XVI. in 
1832, explicitly says in his Circular letter, 
" Hue spectat, &c. To this point tends that 
most vile, detestable, and never to be suffi- 
ciently execrated liberty of booksellers, namely 
of publishing writings of whatever kind they 
please, a liberty which some persons dare, 
with such violence of language to demand 
and promote. — Clement XIII. our predeces- 
sor of happy memory, in his circular on the 
suppression of noxious books (i. e. Protest- 
ant books) pronounces : " We must contend 
with energy such as the subject requires ; 
and with all our might exterminate the deadly 
mischief of so many boohs ; for the matter of 
error will never be effectually removed, un- 
less the guilty elements of depravity be con- 
sumed in the fire." " The apostolic see has, 

* Cramp's Textbook of Popery, p. 50. 



73 



through all ages ever striven to condemn 
suspected and noxious (i. e. Protestant) 
books, and to wrest them forcibly out of 
men's hands ; it is most clear how rash, false 
and injurious to our apostolic see, and fruit- 
ful of enormous evils to the Christian (papal) 
public is the doctrine of those, who not only 
reject the censorship of books, as too severe 
and burdensome, but even proceed to such 
a length of wickedness as to assert, that it is 
contrary to the principles of equal justice, 
and dare to deny to the church the right of 
enacting and employing it,"* pp. 13, 14, 15. 
Accordingly a rigid censorship of the press 
is established and an Index Ezpurgatorius is 
published from time to time at Rome, and 
throughout papal countries, containing a list 
of books printed in Protestant lands, which 

* See the very valuable work of Dr. Brownlee, 
" Popery an Enemy to Civil and Religious Liberty," 
p. 119, 120. This work ought to be rtad by every 
American statesman, and every true friend of Ameri- 
can liberty. Its author may justly be regarded as one 
of the ablest, most learned and indefatigable cham- 
pions of Protestantism, which the present age has 
produced. 

7 



74 

no Catholic may read on pain of excommu- 
nication.* In this catalogue are included 
not only the prominent Protestant Refor- 
mers ; but even such miscellaneous writers 
as Locke, Young, Lavater, Bacon and Addi- 
son ! A strange method this of obeying the 
inspired precept to prove all things and hold 
fast that which is good !f A strange system 
of liberty of thought and freedom of discus- 
sion to be engrafted on our republican in- 
stitutions ! 

Nor are these restrictions mere idle sta- 
tutes. They are written in the blood of 
millions of our brethren, who sought to serve 
God according to the dictates of their con- 
science, and when interdicted had the moral 
heroism to obey God rather than man. The 
infernal inquisition, as it is aptly, and by 
common consent styled, was expressly insti- 
tuted to execute with fearful rigour the ten- 
der mercies of mother church on all who dare 
to think or speak for themselves. How 
faithfully this trust has been executed is at- 

* Cramp's Textbook, p. 378. 
f 1 Thess. 5: 21. 



75 

tested, alas! but too fully by the ensanguined 
annals of the Christian world ! What tyro 
in history has not found his heart sickening 
at the melancholy scenes of torture too hor- 
rible for human nature to endure! The 
Catholic church openly professes to believe 
it her duty to compel all others to adopt her 
faith. Pope Pius in his bull of confirmation, 
orders " all the faithful to receive and invio- 
lably to observe the decrees of the council 
of Trent; enjoining archbishops, bishops, 
&c. to procure that observance from those 
under them, and in order thereto, if neces- 
sary, to call in the aid of the secular arm, 
&c* 

Cardinal Bellarmine, one of the acknow- 
ledged standard authors of the Romish 
church, says, " Experience teaches that 
there is no other remedy for the evil, but to 
put heretics (Protestants) to death; for the 
(Romish) church proceeded gradually and 
tried every remedy: at first she merely ex- 
communicated them; afterwards she added 
a fine; then she banished them; and finally 

* Cramp, p. 385. 



76 

she was constrained to put them to death."* 
The general council of the Lateran, whose 
canon is at this day in force, decreed : " Let 
the secular powers be compelled, if necessary, 
to exterminate to their utmost power all here- 
tics (Protestants) denoted by the church."t 
The present textbook of instruction in the 
Maynooth popish College in Ireland, already 
referred to, which has doubtless been studied 
by many priests now in the United States, 
expressly inculcates: That baptized unbe- 
lievers, such as heretics (Protestants) and 
apostates usually are, and also baptized 
schismatics, may be compelled to return to 
the Catholic (Popish) faith, and to the unity 
of the church, by inflicting bodily punish- 
ments.'l " The church judges and punishes 
heretics (Protestant) because although they 
are out of the church, they being baptized, 
are subject to the (Romish) church?"^ Nor 
is this inhuman doctrine, so dangerous to 
the liberties of every Protestant, inculcated 

* Bellarm. de Laicis, Lib. iii. c. 51. See Smith's 
Synopsis of St. Ligori, p. 406. f Jbid. 

t Petri Dens Theologia, &c. vol. ii. p. 80 of the 
edition of 1832. § Do. p. 114. 



77 

merely on the priests, or kept as a secret 
among them. In order to carry on perse- 
cution, the mass of the people must be, at 
least in some degree, prepared for it. There- 
fore, the only copies of the scripture which 
are permitted to be read by the people, the 
Douay Bible and the Rhemish Testament, 
have so falsified the sacred volume, as to 
make it teach the same doctrine and breathe 
the same spirit of hatred and blood, against 
Protestants. Thus the latter has the follow- 
ing comments: 

Matth. 3. " Heretics may be punished 
and suppressed, and may, and ought, by 
public authority, either spiritual or temporal, 
to be chastised or executed" 

Gal. 1:8. " Catholics should not spare 
their own parents, if they are heretics." 

Heb. 5:7. " The translators of the Pro- 
testant Bible ought to be abhorred to the 
depths of hell." 

Rev. 17: 6. Drunken icith the blood of 
saints. 4< Protestants (says the comment) 
foolishly expound this of Rome, for that 
there they put heretics to death, and allow of 
their punishment in other countries; but their 
7# 



78 

blood is not called the blood of saints, no 
more than the blood of thieves, man-killers, 
and other malefactors, for the shedding of 
which, by order of justice, no common- 
wealth shall answer."* 

No wonder, that in Roman Catholic coun- 
tries, where the priests had full opportunity 
to inculcate this exterminating spirit on the 
people, the latter were willing to execute 
the horrid persecutions against Protestants, 
which stain the arinals of Europe. Yet we 
do not believe that the mass of American 
Catholics have imbibed the inhuman, perse- 
cuting spirit breathed by their Bible, We 
believe they are more humane and charita- 
ble than the priests wish them to be, and 
than they would permit them to be, if Ro- 
manism had the ascendency among us. 

In full accordance with the above settled 
and avowed persecuting principles of pope- 
ry, the infernal inquisition has been put and 
kept in operation, whenever the pope and 
priests could accomplish their ends. I know, 
the Jesuit, bishop England, in his Sermon 

* Protest, vol. ii. 752. ii. 114. 



79 

before Congress, repeated the usual evasion, 
that the inquisition is a civil and not an ec- 
clesiastical tribunal. But this is all a piece 
of subterfuge. It is true that the horrors of 
the inquisition can be carried into full execu- 
tion only where the civil government has 
become connected with the Romish church, 
and in such countries where the government 
sanctions the inquisition, it is, we believe, 
customary, that a civil officer is appointed 
to execute the sentence of the inquisition on 
the hapless victim of their power. But the 
whole trial is conducted, and sentence 
passed, by ecclesiastical officers. None but 
priests can be inquisitors, and the tortures 
in the inquisition itself are, in every sense, 
under their entire control, and applied, ex- 
clusively by their command and in their pre- 
sence, and by their minions. As well might 
it be said that our county courts are not 
civil but religious tribunals, because the 
hangman who executes the sentence pro- 
nounced by them, is a Lutheran or Calvinist, 
a Methodist, or perchance a Romanist! No 
case, if we mistake not, has ever occurred 
in the history of the inquisition, in the mil- 



80 

lions of victims sacrificed by this bloody 
tribunal, in which the civil officer has dared 
to refuse to execute the sentence of the in- 
quisitors; for he well knew that his own 
bones would pay the price of his temerity! 
The inquisition therefore undoubtedly re- 
mains what it always has been, an ecclesi- 
astical tribunal, the engine of an intolerant, 
persecuting church to inflict tortures the 
most inhuman and savage, on all who dare 
to exercise their natural and unalienable 
right, of judging for themselves in matters 
of religion, and obeying God rather than 
man! The inquisition gradually grew out 
of the duty enjoined on the bishops by Pope 
Lucius III. A* D. 1184, to visit each his 
diocess, at least once or twice a year, for 
the purpose of searching for heretics. Pope 
Innocent III* by his bull of 1207, sent his in- 
quisitors against the Waldenses,* and the 
fourth Lateran council in 1215, in order that 
this bloody work might be prosecuted with- 
out any interruption, converted this inquisi- 

* Eisenschmidt's Romisches Bullarium, vol. i. 
p. 31. 



81 

torial power of the bishops into a standing 
inquisition, which establishment was further 
matured at the council of Toulouse, 1229. 
In the year 1232-3, pope Gregory IX. ap- 
pointed the Dominicans perpetual inquisitors 
in the name of the pope.* In 1261, pope 
Urban IV. issued a brief, ordering that in 
all cases where bishops had commenced pro- 
cess against any persons accused before the 
inquisition, the decisions of the inquisitors 
should have precedence, and the execution 
of the punishments denounced by them not 
be hindered. In 1325 pope John XXII. for- 
bade the formation of treaties with heretics, 
pronounced those already made not binding, 
and directed the inquisitors to arrest all per- 
sons charged with favouring or harbouring 
heretical persons.f Pope Paul III. in 1542, 
issued a bull for the express purpose of for- 
tifying and giving increased efficacy to this 
infernal tribunal. He, amongst other things, 
decreed, that no persons, of any rank or pur- 

* See Grieseler's Hist. vol. ii. p. 388. Note 18. 
"Adjicimus insuper," &c. 
] Eisenchmidt's Bullarium Romanum vol. i. p. 164 



82 

suit, shall be exempt from this tribunal, on 
pretence of having received any such license 
or privilege of exemption from the papal 
chair. He says expressly " that the powers 
of the inquisitors shall now and hereafter 
extend to all persons suspected of heresy, 
&c. — That no civil authorities shall dare to 
prevent the inquisitors from executing their 
functions, &c. # In another bull issued A. 
D. 1542, this pontiff established a General 
Congregation of the Inquisition, with power 
to arrest, and even imprison (carceribus 
mancipandi) suspected persons of any and 
of every rank, to prosecute their trial to a 
final decision, when the canonical punish- 
ments shall be inflicted, and the property of 
those condemned to death, be disposed off 
And finally, he, in advance, pronounces all 
their decisions valid, demands inviolable 
obedience to them, and pronounces every 
attempt of the civil authorities to interfere 
with the powers of the inquisitors null and 
void."J 

* Id. vol. ii. p. 1, 2, 3, and B. Magnum T. i. p. 
751. const. 80. ed. Lux. j- Idem. vol. ii. p. 4. 

% Id. p. 5. and Bull. m. Tom. i. p. 762. 



83 

And the Council of Trent, the last general 
council of the Romish church, four mem- 
bers of which had themselves been inqui- 
sitors,* expressed great interest in behalf of 
the inquisition.f Jn view of all these facts, 
the ecclesiastical character of the inquisition 
ought never again to be denied. The popes 
and Romish church have continued^ to this 
day to favour and preserve this tribunal 
wherever they could, and even in these 
United States, bishop England attempted, in 
a lecture at Baltimore, to vindicate and eu- 
logize this satanic institution.^ According 
to Llorente, this fearful tribunal cost Spain 
alone 2,000,000 of lives, and the amount of 
torments suffered by these, and the other 
victims of papal persecution, was probably 
greater than that of all the generations that 
ever lived and died in God's appointed way, 
by natural death. A glance at the nature 
of these tortures will illustrate our idea. 
One mode of torture is by the pendulum. 

* Mendham's council of Trent, p. 190. 

| Mendham's council of Trent, pp. 189, 190. 

X Dr. Brownlee, Popery an enemy, &c. p. 105, &c. 

§ See Smith's Synopsis of St. Ligori, p. 313, 315. 



84 

"The condemned," says Llorente, "is fas- 
tened in a groove upon a table upon his 
back; suspended above him is a pendulum, 
the lower edge of which is sharp, and it is 
so constructed as to become longer at every 
stroke. The wretch sees this implement of 
destruction swinging to and fro above him, 
and every moment the keen edge approach- 
ing nearer and nearer: at length it cuts the 
skin of his nose, and gradually cuts deeper 
and deeper, till life is extinct." This punish- 
ment is yet in use in this secret tribunal; for 
one of the prisoners released when the 
Cortes of Madrid threw open the inquisition 
in 1820, had actually been condemned to it, 
and was to have been executed on the ensu- 
ing day! Another mode of torture consists 
in hoisting the victim to the ceiling by seve- 
ral thin cords tied to his wrists upon his 
back, whilst a weight of lOOlbs. is attached 
to his feet. He is then suddenly suffered to 
drop, yet not so low as to let the weight 
touch the floor. His fall is so sudden and 
the shock so great as to dislocate his shoul- 
ders and often to break his bones ! ! A third 
torture " consisted of an instrument some- 



85 

thing like a smith's anvil, fixed in the middle 
of the floor, with a spike on the top. Ropes 
are attached to each corner of the room, to 
which the criminal's legs and arms are tied, 
and he is drawn up a little and then let down 
with his back bone exactly on the spike of 
iron, upon which his whole weight rests. A 
fourth torture, being what is termed a slight 
one, they apply only to women. Matches 
of tow and pitch are wrapped round their 
hands, and then set on fire and suffered to 
burn until the flesh is consumed.* A fifth 
is the torture by fire. " The prisoner is 
placed with his naked legs in the stocks. 
The soles of his feet are then well greased 
with lard (or other penetrating and inflamma- 
ble substances!) and a blazing chafing-dish 
applied to them, by the heat of which they 
become perfectly fried. When his shrieks 
and lamentations were greatest, a board was 
placed between his feet and the fire for a 
while; and then taken away again, if his 

* History of the Inquisition, with an Introduction 
by the Rev. Cyrus Mason, New York, 1835. 

f Stockdale's History of the Inquisition, p. 191, 
of the London 4to. ed. 1810. 
8 



86 



tormentors were not satisfied. Another mode 
of torture was the dry pan ; in which the 
victim was literally roasted to death by a 
slow fire." Another method is thus describ- 
ed by M'Gavin, who had been a priest at 
Saragossa in Spain, as certified by Earl 
Stanhope, who had known him there. M'Ga- 
vin escaped from that country, renounced 
popery, received orders in the Protestant 
Episcopal church in London, and published 
his Masterkey to Popery, in which we find 
the following statement: " In a large room 
she (the guide) showed me (the witness) a 
thick wheel covered on both sides with thick 
boards, and opening a little w r indow in the 
centre of it, desired me to look with a can- 
dle on the inside, and I saw all the circum- 
ference of the wheel set with sharp razors. — 
This instrument is designed for those that 
speak against the pope and the holy fathers. 
They are put within the wheel, and the door 
being locked, the executioner turns the wheel 
till the person is dead."* A very frequent 

* M'Gavin's Masterkey to Popery, p. 235, Ha- 
gerstown ed. 



87 

mode of torture is by water. The sufferer 
is tied down on a bench, so tightly that the 
cords cut his arms and legs to the bones. 
His nostrils are closed, and a filter inserted 
into his mouth, through which a large quan- 
tity of water is gradually poured. The 
wretched victim is compelled at every breath 
to swallow a mouthful of water, until at 
length his stomach and breast are intensely 
swelled, and he at last either expires amid 
his indescribable sufferings, or a short re- 
prieve is given, only to enable him to endure 
another torturing !* And the last torture we 
shall mention is by an infernal engine in the 
form of a female, the Virgin Mary. When 
the inquisition was thrown open in Spain by 
Napoleon, such an instrument was found in 
the cell. The familiar was ordered to ma- 
noeuvre it. He did so. It raised its arms, 
beneath its robes was a metal breast-plate 
filled with needles, spikes and lancets ! A 
knapsack was thrown into its arms, it gradu- 
ally closed them and pierced the knapsack 

* Dr. Brownlee's Letters in the Roman Catholic 
controversy, p. 337. 



88 

with a hundred deep cuts, all of which 
would have pierced, and often did pierce 
the living victim!! But it is enough. Hu- 
manity sickens at the thought, that man could 
ever be so estranged from his brother, as 
thus to become his " darkest, deadliest foe." 
" When (says Stockdale)* the accused 
was condemned to the torture, they con- 
ducted him to the place destined for its ap- 
plication, which was called the place of 
torment. It was a subterraneous vault, the 
descent to which was by a great number of 
winding passages, in order that the shrieks 
of the unhappy sufferers should not be heard.\ 
In this place there were no seats, but such 
as were destined for the inquisitors, who 
were always present at the infliction of the 
torture. It was lighted only by two gloomy 
lamps, whose dim and mournful light served 
but to show to the criminal the instruments 

* History of Inquisition, pp. 191, 192. 

f That there are deep subterraneous vaults under 
the cathedral at Baltimore, is affirmed by Rev. R. J. 
Breckinridge, and sustained by highly probable evi- 
dence. — Lit. and Relig. Magazine, Vol. i. p. 361 — 
362. 



89 

of his torment. Here it was, unseen by any 
eye save that of God, that these fiends in 
human shape inflicted on their defenceless 
victims tortures which humanity shudders 
to contemplate, and which, if aught on earth 
can do so, present not an unapt emblem of 
the torments of hell ! What American, that 
has the heart of a man, of a husband, or a 
father, will not be aroused to a watchfulness 
and effort, lest even his children after him 
might fall into the hands of such unfeeling 
executioners 1 

In addition to this regular, systematic pro- 
cess, the Romish church has been guilty of 
numerous, extensive and sometimes national 
persecutions, in which hundreds of thousands 
of our Protestant brethren were butchered 
in cold blood. Need I point you to the 
bloody tragedy of St. Bartholomew's eve,* 

* "To lull the Protestants into security, the court 
now enforced the terms of the treaty (of toleration 
for the Protestants) with much apparent zeal, pro- 
posed a marriage hetween the young king of Na- 
varre and the king's sister, and thus at length drew 
Coligni, the king of Navarre, and the prince of Conde, 
(and a number of other Protestant leaders) to appsar 
8# 



90 

in 1572, when at the nod of the Pope a hun- 
dred thousand of the best people of France 
were massacred in cold blood by order of 

at court. All this was preparatory to the assassina- 
tion of the Protestants, by order of the king and 
qneen mother, on Bartholomew's eve, Aug. 22d, 157*2. 
The bloody scene began at midnight, at the signal of 
tolling the great bell of the palace, and continued 
three days at Paris. Coligni was the first victim. 
With him 500 noblemen and about 6,000 other Pro- 
testants were butchered in Paris alone. Orders were 
despatched to all parts of the empire for a similar 
massacre every where." " From the city of Paris the 
massacre spread throughout the whole kingdom. In 
the city of Meaux, they threw above 200 into prison, 
and after they had ravished and killed a great num- 
ber of women, and plundered the houses of Protes- 
tants," they deliberately murdered, one by one, all 
whom they had imprisoned. The number of Pro- 
testants thus butchered throughout France, in the 
thirty days during which this massacre was conti- 
nued, cannot be accurately ascertained, and is esti- 
mated at from 30,000 to 100,000!!! When the 
pope's legate sent the news to Rome, the holy father 
and his cardinals repaired to the church, and publicly 
gave thanks to God for the glorious news, the cannon 
were discharged, and a jubilee proclaimed through- 
out the christian world ! ! ! — Murdock's Mos. Vol. iii. 
p. 197. Convers. Lexicon, Vol. i. p. 827—829. 



91 

their own priest-ridden king, Charles IX. 
Need I speak to you of the treacherous re- 
vocation of the edict of Nantes, by approba- 
tion and applause of the Roman pontiff, in 
violation of all law, human and divine, by 
w T hich half a million or more of the best ci- 
tizens of France, because they would not 
renounce their religion, were compelled to 
flee from papal persecution and death, and, 
stripped of all their earthly goods, to seek 
shelter in foreign lands ? Need I direct your 
attention to the millions of Waldenses and 
Albigenses w r ho were butchered in cold 
blood by the minions of the pope 1 Need I 
speak to you of the thirty years' war in Ger- 
many, which was mainly instigated by the 
Jesuits, in order to deprive the Protestants 
of the right of free religious worship, se- 
cured to them by the treaty of Augsburg? 
Or of the Irish rebellion,* of the inhuman 

* The celebrated historian Hume, gives the fol- 
lowing description of the suffering Protestants in Ire- 
land, in the great massacre which began in 1641, in 
the reign of Charles I. 

" The rebellion which had been upwards of four- 
teen years threatened in Ireland, and which had been 



92 



butchery of about fifteen millions of Indians 
in South America, Mexico and Cuba, by 

repressed only by the vigour of the earl of Stafford's 
government, broke out at this time with incredible 
fury. On this fatal day, the Irish, everywhere inter- 
mingled with the English, needed but a hint from 
their leaders and priests to begin hostilities against 
a people whom they hated on account of their re'i- 
gion, and envied for their riches and prosperity. The 
houses, cattle, and goods of the unwary English were 
first seized. Those who heard of the commotions in 
their neighbourhood, instead of deserting their habita- 
tions, and assembling together for mutual protection, 
remained at home, in hopes of defending their pro- 
perty, and fell thus separately into the hands of their 
enemies. After rapacity had fully exerted itself, cru- 
elty, and that the most barbarous that ever in any 
nation was known or heard of, began its operations. 
A universal massacre commenced of the English, 
(Protestants) now defenceless, and passively re- 
signed to their inhuman foes; no age, no sex, no 
condition was spared. The wife, weeping for her 
butchered husband, and embracing her helpless chil- 
dren, was pierced with them, and perished by the 
same stroke ; the old, the young, the vigorous, the 
infirm, underwent the like fate, and were confounded 
in one common ruin. In vain did flight save from 
the first assault; destruction was everywhere let 
loose, and met the hunted victims at every turn. In 



93 

the Spanish papists ? In short, it is calcu- 
lated by authentic historians, that papal 
Rome has shed the blood of sixty-eight mil- 
lions of the human race in order to establish 
her unfounded claims to religious domi- 
nion.* 

What language then can express the gra- 
titude due from Protestants to the Reforma- 
tion, which has secured them the privilege 

vain was recourse had to relations, to companions, 
to friends; all connexions were dissolved, and death 
was dealt by that hand from which protection was 
implored and expected. Without provocation, with- 
out opposition, the astonished English, (Protestants) 
being in profound peace, and full security, were mas- 
sacred by their nearest neighbours, with whom they 
had long upheld a continued intercourse of kindness 
and good offices. But death was the lightest punish- 
ment inflicted by those enraged rebels ; all the tor- 
tures which wanton cruelty could devise, all the 
lingering pains of body, and anguish of mind, the 
agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge excited 
without injury, and cruelty derived from no cause. 
To enter into particulars would shock the least deli- 
cate humanity ; such enormities, though attested by 
undoubted evidence, would appear almost incredible." 
* Dr. Brownlee's Popery an enemy to civil liberty, 
p. 105. 



94 



of worshiping God according to the dictates 
of their own conscience without danger of 
being roasted at the fire, or having their 
bones broken on the rack ! The first prin- 
ciple which guided the Reformers was, that 
no authority on earth could justly require 
them to act contrary to the dictates of their 
conscience, and they did not hesitate to tell 
the Emperor to his face, in the XVIth Arti- 
cle of the Confession presented to him at 
Augsburg, that if ever their civil rulers 
commanded them to do aught contrary to 
their convictions of duty, they were bound 
" to obey God rather than men." Luther 
himself, the very earliest of the Reformers, 
denounced religious persecution in the most 
decided terms. Do you say, the civil go- 
vernment should indeed not force men to 
believe, but only interfere, in order that the 
people be not led astray by false doctrine ? 
and how could heretics otherwise be put 
down ? I answer, to counteract heresy is 
the business of ministers, not of the civil 
rulers. Here a different course must be 
pursued, and other weapons than the sword 
must fight these battles. The word of God 



95 

must here contend ; if this proves unavail- 
ing, neither can civil governments remedy 
the evil, though they should deluge the earth 
with blood. Heresy is an intellectual thing, 
that cannot be hewn bv the sword, nor 
burned with fire, nor drowned with water. 
The word of God alone can subdue it ; as 
Paul says, " The weapons of our warfare 
are not carnal, but mighty through God to 
the pulling down of the strong holds," &c. 
2 Cor. 10: 4, 5. It is indeed true, that even 
the Protestant churches did not at once 
throw off every vestige of Popish intole- 
rance, but the cases of persecution by them 
were few and comparatively mild, and soon 
passed $way. No Protestant church ever 
embraced the Romish doctrine, that it is a 
duty by fire and sword to compel others to 
adopt our views. When Protestants did 
persecute, it was in opposition to their own 
principles ; but when Romanists put Pro- 
testants to death, they only do what their 
creed requires, what their books distinctly 
tell us they believe it their duty to do, when- 
ever they have the predominant power in 
their hands. 



V. The last feature of the Reformation 
to which we shall advert is, that it has deli- 
vered the civil government of the countries 
which embraced it, from 'papal tyranny, and 
has given a new impulse to civil liberty, which 
has been felt throughout the Christian world. 

Since the relative tendencies of Protes- 
tantism and Popery have been fully deve- 
loped and attentively studied, no fact in the 
philosophy of history is more fully estab- 
lished than that the former is intimately 
allied to civil liberty; and the latter to civil 
despotism. Ecclesiastical government, like 
that which pertains to the state, may be di- 
vided into government of the will or autho- 
rity, and government of law or reason. The 
several Protestant churches are confessedly 
governed by fixed principles of reason and 
scripture. They have adopted the word of 
God as their ultimate book of facts and prin- 
ciples in morals, by which they profess to 
be guided, to which they refer in all doubt- 
ful or disputed cases. This book they freely 
circulate among the community, that all 
may study the subject, become qualified to 
judge for themselves, and exercise their civil 



97 

influence in defence of their rights. Ro- 
manism demands absolute, unconditional 
submission to the decisions of mother 
church ; discourages all effort in the com- 
munity to judge for themselves ; yea, prohi- 
bits the general reading of God's word ; in- 
terdicts altogether the writings of those who 
impugn the positions of the church, and 
condemns as mortal sins every attempt to 
vindicate the unalienable rights of the peo- 
ple. Nay, it even conceals from its own 
laymen those decrees of councils and bulls 
of popes, which are most dangerous to their 
own liberties and those of their Protestant 
brethren, although it requires them all from 
Sabbath to Sabbath to repeat their belief in 
them. Thus creating a habit of instinctive 
submission to certain unknown doctrines or 
principles of their church, and preparing at 
least the less enlightened eventually to exe- 
cute purposes of cruelty and injustice, from 
which, if honestly dealt with, they would 
shrink with horror. To what flagrant vio- 
lations of the civil rights of governments 
and people, these principles of popery led in 
the course of her history, is also but too in- 
9 



98 

delibly impressed on the annals of Europe 
and South America and even Asia ! How 
much, how incalculably much the Protestant 
nations have gained by the Reformation, is 
demonstrated by their manifest and striking 
superiority to their Catholic neighbours in 
every thing relating to civil rights and 
liberty, to internal improvements, to domes- 
tic purity and happiness, to literary activity 
and enterprise and to scientific investiga- 
tions. But that we may do no injustice to 
the Romish church, we shall let her own 
standard writings illustrate the facts in her 
history, and as her principles professedly 
change not, the investigation will be fairly 
applicable to prospective Romanism in our 
own country. The established principles of 
Popery which have hitherto led to her en- 
croachments on civil liberty, and must also 
do so in our country so soon as she pre- 
vails, are the following : — 

1. The popes actually do claim at this 
day jurisdiction over the highest civil govern- 
ments of the world. Listen to language of 
pope Pius VII., in his bull of excommunica- 
tion against Napoleon in 1809 : " Let them 



99 



once and again understand, that by the law 
of Christ their sovereignty (the French em- 
pire) is subject to our throne ; for we also 
exercise a sovereignty ; we add also, a more 
noble sovereignty; unless it were just that 
the spirit should yield to the flesh ; and ce- 
lestial things to terrestrial."* Hear again 
the language of the present pope Gregory 
XVI. but three years ago. His priests in 
Portugal were in rebellion against the go- 
vernment, the government drove off the 
pope's nuncio, and confiscated the property 
of the rebellious priests. The pope de- 
nounces them " for rashly arrogating power 
over the church," and adds : "We do expli- 
citly declare, that we do absolutely reprobate 
all the decrees of the government of Lisbon 
made to the detriment of the church and her 
priests, and declare them null and of no 
effect." Hear finally the claims of Pius 
VII. in 1808, to his agents in Poland: the 
laws of the church do not recognize any civil 
privileges as belonging to persons not Catho- 
lic ; that their marriages are not valid; that 

* M'Gavin's Protestant, ch. 106, 107. Vol. ii. 



100 

they can live only in concubinage ; that their 
children being bastards are incapacitated to 
inherit; that the Catholics themselves are 
not validly married, unless they are united 
according to the rules prescribed by the 
court of Rome; and that when they are 
married according to these rules, their mar- 
riage is valid even if they, in other respects, 
infringed all the laws of their country.* 
Here, then, if there is any meaning in lan- 
guage, the popes explicitly and honestly tell 
us, that they do claim authority over the 
existing civil governments of the land, and 
claim and exercise the power of abrogating 
the civil laws, made by the government. 
They do not even rest their claim on the 
fact, that the French and Portuguese had 
professed the Romish religion; because as 
Dens' Theology, the present popish text- 
book in Maynooth College, where bishop 
England and multitudes of our Irish priests 
were educated, informs us, " Though they 
(the Protestants) are not of the {Romish) 

* Quarterly Register, Vol. iii.p. 89 ; and Beecher's 
Plea, p. 173. 



101 

church, they (the Protestants) being baptized, 

ARE SUBJECT TO THE (Romish) CHURCH" ! ! ! 

So that the same claim to the control of our 
government may be expected to be asserted 
by the pope, so soon as he finds his Catholics 
strong enough to sustain him. 

2. Again, the popes undertake to depose 
civil rulers and to absolve the people from 
their allegiance to their oxen civil governments, 
even if they had formally pledged that alle- 
giance by an oath. 

The third Lateran council prescribes to 
all good Catholics, " That oaths which contra- 
vene the utility of the church, and the consti- 
tutions of the holy fathers, are not to be called 
oaths, but rather perjuries."* 

The fourth council of the Lateran is still 
more explicit in its decrees. Having first 
commanded that "the secular powers, what- 
ever office they execute, be admonished, per- 
suaded, and if necessary compelled by eccle- 
siastical censure, that as they desire to be 
reputed and accounted faithful, so they would 
publicly take an oath for the defence of the 

* Labbei Concilia, Tom. x. p. 1522. 
9* 



102 

(Romish) faith; that they will endeavour in 
good faith, according to their power to de- 
stroy all heretics marked by the church, out 
of the lands of their jurisdiction" — The 
council then proceeds to prescribe the re- 
medy of the church, in case any civil ruler 
should refuse to exterminate his subjects at 
the bidding of the papal minions. " But if 
the temporal prince, being admonished and 
required, shall neglect to purge his land 
from this heretical filthiness, he shall be 
excommunicated by the bishops of the pro- 
vince, and if he shall refuse to give satisfac- 
tion within a year, let it be signified to the 
pope, that he may forthwith pronounce his 
vassals absolved from their allegiance (for 
not murdering their Protestant neighbours ! ! !) 
and expose his land to be possessed by Catho- 
lics, who having destroyed the heretics, 
may possess it without contradiction, &c."* 
To the decrees of these councils among 
others, every pope binds himself to adhere, 
in the following words: "I also without 

* Labbei Concilia, Tom. xi. Part i. p. 148, can. 3, 
and Horne on Romanism, p. 30. 



103 

doubt receive and profess all other things, 
delivered, defined and declared by the sacred 
canons and general councils, and especially 
by the holy council of Trent ; and all things 
contrary to them, with all heresies rejected 
and cursed by the church, I likewise con- 
demn, reject and curse."* And even the 
late pope Pius VII. explicitly says : " It is a 
rule of canon law, that the subjects of a 
prince manifestly heretical (Protestant) are 

RELEASED FROM ALL OBLIGATION to Mm, are 

dispensed from all allegiance and all ho- 
mage" ! ! ! This is the theory of the Romish 
church, set forth in terms too explicit to 
be misunderstood. The popes, therefore, 
down to the present incumbent, do evidently 
claim the right and avow it as their obliga- 
tion to denounce Protestant rulers, and to 
absolve their subjects from all civil alle- 
giance to them. 

That the popes have not been remiss in 
the discharge of the duty enjoined on them 
by the canons, whenever they possessed the 
requisite power, is testified only too abun- 
dantly by the history of papal countries. 

* Pope Pius* VHth Creed. 



104 

Saint Gregory VII. twice anathematized 
and deposed the Emperor Henry IV. In 
1110 the Emperor Henry V. was deposed 
by Paschal II. ; John, King of England, by 
Innocent III. in 1210, and Raymond, Count 
of Thoulouse, by the same pontiff, in 1215; 
the Emperor Frederick II. by Innocent IV. 
in 1245; Peter, King of Arragon, by Mar- 
tin IV. in 1283; Matthew, Duke of Milan, in 
1322, and Lewis of Bavaria, in 1324, by 
John XXII. ; Barnabas, Duke of Milan, by 
Urban V. in 1363 ; Alphonso, King of Arra- 
gon, in 1425, by Martin V.; the King of 
Navarre, by Julius II. in 1512; Henry VIII. 
King of England, by Paul III. in 1538; Hen- 
ry III. of France, in 1583, by Sixtus V.; 
who, on hearing of this monarch's assassi- 
nation by friar Jacques Clement, declared 
that the murderer's fervent zeal toward God 
surpassed that of Judith and Eleazar, and 
that the assassination was effected by Pro- 
vidence! In 1591, Gregory XIV. and in 
the following year the uncanonically elected 
Pope, Clement VII., issued bulls of deposi- 
tion against Henry IV. King of France, 
whose life was first attempted by John Chas- 



105 



tel, a Jesuit, then by a monk, and finally he 
was stabbed by Ravaillac. In 1569 Saint 
Pius V. deposed Queen Elizabeth, whose 
Romanist subjects he stimulated to rebel 
against her, and furnished some of them 
with money to aid their nefarious attempts; 
and bulls of deposition were fulminated 
against that illustrious Queen, by Gregory 
XIII. in 1580, Sixtus V. in 1587, and Cle- 
ment VIII. in 1600. Sixtus V. in his bull, 
styled her an usurper, a heretic, and an ex- 
communicate; gave her throne to Philip II. 
of Spain, and commanded the English to join 
the Spaniards in dethroning her. Clement 
VIII. in 1600, issued a bull to prevent James 
I. ascending the throne of England, declar- 
ing that "when it should happen that thai 
miserable woman [Queen Elizabeth] should 
die, they [her subjects] should admit none to 
the crown, though ever so nearly allied to it 
by blood, except they would not only toler- 
ate the [Roman] Catholic religion, but pro- 
mote it to the utmost of their power, and 
would, according to ancient custom, under- 
take upon oath to perform the same." In 
1643, Urban VIII. issued a bull of deposition 



106 

against Charles I. in Ireland; where two 
years before not fewer than 100,000 Protes- 
tants were massacred, and to those who had 
joined the rebellion of 1641, the same holy 
pontiff granted a plenary indulgence. In 
1729 Benedict XIII. at the instance of the 
Romanist Irish prelates, issued a bull to de- 
throne George II. King of England, with an 
indulgence for raising money to support the 
Pretender. In 1768, Clement XIII. pub- 
lished a brief, on occasion of certain edicts 
issued by the Duke of Parma and Placentia, 
in his own dominions ; wherein the pontiff, in 
the plenitude of his usurped authority, abro- 
gated, repealed, and annulled, as being pre- 
judicial to the liberty, immunity, and juris- 
diction of the church, whatever the Duke 
had ordered in his edicts, and forbade his 
subjects to obey their sovereign; further de- 
priving all, who had either published or 
obeyed the edicts, of all their privileges, and 
incapacitating them from receiving absolu- 
tion, until they should fully and entirely have 
restored matters to their former condition, 
or should have made suitable satisfaction to 
the church, and to the holy see. In 1800, the 



107 

late pope Pius VII. announced his election to 
the pontificate to Louis XVIII. as the lawful 
King of France ; and in the following year 
he exhibited a most edifying instance of pa- 
pal duplicity, when it suited his interest, by 
entering into a concordat with Bonaparte, 
in which, besides suppressing 146 episco- 
pal and metropolitan sees, and dismissing 
their bishops and metropolitans without any 
form of judicature, he absolved all French- 
men from their oaths of allegiance to their le- 
gitimate sovereign, and authorized an oath of 
allegiance to the First Consul: and when 
Louis XVIII. sent his ambassador to Rome 
to present his credentials, the pontiff refused 
to receive him. With marvellous infallibi- 
lity, however, not quite eight years after, the 
same pontiff' issued a bull (in June, 1809,) 
excommunicating Bonaparte and all who 
adhered to him in his invasion of the papal 
states; in which bull he makes the same ex- 
travagant pretensions to supreme power 
which had been put forth by Saint Gregory 
VII., Innocent III. and other pontiffs.* 

* See Home on Romanism, pp. 31, 32, 33. 



108 

But it may be asked, why have not the 
popes exercised this right against our own 
government, if they are in sober earnest in 
claiming its possession 1 To this interroga- 
tion we will permit pope Pius himself to fur- 
nish a very satisfactory reply. " To be 
sure," he says, " we have fallen into such 
calamitous times, that it is not possible for 
the spouse of Jesus Christ to practise, nor 
expedient for her to recall her holy maxims 
of just rigour against the enemies of the 
faith. But although she cannot exercise her 
right of deposing heretics (Protestants) from 
their principalities, and declaring them de- 
prived of their property" &c. The reason, 
it seems, why the popes do not now dethrone 
Protestant rulers as they formerly did, is not 
a change in their principles, but a want of 
power to execute their wishes, an unwilling- 
ness on the part of the Protestant subjects to 
obey the lordly dictates of the pontiffs ! ! 
Hence the only course left for the holy father, 
is first to convert enough of these heretical 
subjects to the Romish church, and train 
them to implicit obedience to the priests, so 
that in due time they will be prepared to 



109 

execute the pontifical mandate to " dethrone 
their heretical rulers," and extirpate their 
heretical fellow citizens. 

3. The third principle of Popery which has 
led to infringement of civil liberties of Pro- 
testants is, that Romish ecclesiastics, priests, 
monks, and nuns claim exemption from the 
civil jurisdiction of the governments under 
which they live. 

The bull of Pope Paul V. termed "In 
ccena Domini," or "At the supper of the 
Lord," in its fourteenth section, "excommu- 
nicates all persons, both ecclesiastical and se- 
cular, who appeal from the execution of the 
pontifical briefs, indulgences, or any other 
of their decrees — and all those who have 
recourse to secular courts for redress from 
Roman jurisdiction — and all those who hin- 
der or forbid the publication and execution 
of those letters and decrees ; and all those 
who molest, imprison, terrify or threaten 
those who execute the commands of the 
Roman court.* 

* M'Gavin's Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 690, 691. 
10 



110 

Section sixteenth, of the same bull, H curses 
all those who draw ecclesiastical persons, 
convents, &c, before their tribunal, against 
the rules of the canon law."* 

And section twenty, of the same instru- 
ment, completes the work. It anathematizes 
and excommunicates all and every the ma- 
gistrates, judges, notaries, &c, who intrude 
themselves in capital or criminal causes 
against ecclesiastical persons, by processing, 
apprehending or banishing them, or pro- 
nouncing or executing any sentences against 
them, without the special, particular and ex- 
press license of this holy apostolic see : and 
also all those who extend such licenses to 
persons or cases not expressed, or any other 
way abuse them, although the offenders 
should be counsellors, senators, chancellors, 
or entitled by any other " names "f The 
twenty-eighth section enjoins it on all pre- 
lates, bishops, priests, &c, absolutely to pub- 

* M'Gavin's Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 691. 

f M'Gavin's Protestant, Vol. ii. p. 691. St. Li- 
gori, the latest authority, quoted by Dr. Varela, in 
New York, affirms the same dangerous doctrine. 



Ill 

lish this arrogant bull at least once a year in 
their churches. Whether this bull is regu- 
larly published in this country we know not. 
Possibly the pope, who can and often has 

" It is certain, (he says) that ecclesiastics are not 
subject to the civil law, either by canonical or civil 
right. They are bound, however, in conscience, by 
the civil laws which are not repugnant to their sta~ 
tion. The civil law has no power to compel them, 
but it can give them directions, in order that they may 
conform to the community." — De Privileg. N. 18. 
" The clergy, (he continues) are exempt from pu- 
nishment by the civil law." — Id., N. 19. See Smith's 
Ligori, a work that deserves to be in the hands of 
every American citizen, p. 207. 

That Catholic priests do not feel bound to speak 
the truth in some cases, even when on oath, is expli- 
citly asserted by this same saint, whose works were 
sanctioned by the pope and Congregation of Rites at 
Rome in 1816. "A confessor may affirm, even with 
an oath, that he knows nothing about a sin which he 
has heard in confession, meaning thereby, that he 
does not know it as a man, but not that he does not 
know it as a minister of Christ." " A culprit or a 
witness who is interrogated by a judge unlawfully, 
can swear that he is ignorant, which in truth he 
knows."— Id. N. 153-154. Smith's Synopsis of 
Ligori, p. 160. 



112 

suited his religion to the times, has given a 
secret dispensation for a season in this re- 
publican country ; if not, it is now published, 
though probably in Latin, that it may not 
excite public attention. In Roman Catholic 
countries it is faithfully published and acted 
on : and even " though the late Grand Duke 
Leopold, of Tuscany, frequently commanded 
the entire suppression of it in his territories, 
that paper was, notwithstanding, affixed by 
the priests to the confessionals and sacris- 
ties ; while others had the hardihood to pub- 
lish it from the pulpit or the altar on the day 
specified by the pope." * 

4. The fourth principle which makes them 
dangerous to civil governments is, that their 
priests, fyc, are under such oaths to the pope 
and his kingdom, as render them necessarily 
unfaithful to the civil liberties of any country. 

The oath taken by priests is as follows : 
" Omnia a sacris canonibus," &c. " All 
things defined by canons and general coun- 
cils, and especially by the Synod of Trent, 

* M 4 Gavin's Protestant, Vol. ii% p. 697. 



113 

I undoubtedly receive and profess. And 
all things contrary to them I reject and 
anathematize ; and from my dependents and 
others who are under my care, as far as 
possible, I will withhold. And this Catholic 
faith I will teach and enforce upon them" 
The canonical oath, which every prelate 
takes at his consecration, runs thus: "Ego 
ab hac hora," &c. " From this hour for- 
ward I will be faithful and obedient to my 
Lord the pope, and his successors. The 
counsels with which they trust me, I will 
not disclose to any man, to the injury of the 
pope and his successors. I will assist them 
to retain and defend the popedom and the 
royalties of Peter against all men. I will 
carefully conserve, defend and promote the 
rights, honours, privileges, and authority of 
the pope. I will not be in any council, pact 
or treaty, in which any thing prejudicial to 
the person, rights, or power of the pope is 
contrived ; and if I shall know any such 
things, 1 will hinder them to the utmost of 
my power, and with all possible speed I will 
signify them to the pope. To the utmost of 
10* 



114 

my power I will observe the pope's com- 
mands, and make others observe them. I 
will impugn and, persecute all heretics* 
(Protestants,) and rebels to my lord the 
pope." * 

Now when it is recollected that the power 
claimed by the popes is as much political 
as religious ; that he claims control over all 
civil governments, as has been already proved 
to you both by papal bulls and canons of 
councils, is it not difficult to evade the infe- 
rence, that persons who have taken this oath 
to support ail the power and " royalties" of 
the pope, cannot be true to the political in* 
terests of our own country and govern- 
ment, which are so diametrically opposed 
to those of popery 1 

Of a character still more glaringly trea- 
sonable is the form of a " Jesuit's oath of 
secrecy, as it remains on record at Paris, 
among the Society of Jesus." f In order, 

* Pontifical. Romanor. de Consecrat. Elect, in 
Episcopum, p. 57, and M'Gavin, Vol. ii. p. 694. 

| The Jesuits' Oath. — I, A. B., now in the pre- 
sence of Almighty God, the blessed Virgin Mary, the 



115 

it would seem, to keep the whole body of 
ecclesiastics detached from the interests of 
civil governments, to make them an eccle- 
siastical and civil standing army, true only 

blessed Michael the archangel, the blessed St. John 
Baptist, the holy apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and 
the saints and sacred host of heaven, and to yon my 
ghostly father, do declare from my heart, without 
mental reservation, that his holiness Pope Urban is 
Christ's vicar general, and is the true and only head 
of the Catholic or universal church throughout the 
earth ; and that by the virtue of the keys of binding 
and loosing given to his holiness by my Saviour Je- 
sus Christ, he hath power to depose heretical kings$ 
princes, states, commonwealths, and governments, 
all being illegal, without his sacred confirmation, and 
that they may safely be destroyed ; therefore, to the 
utmost of my power I shall and will defend this doc- 
trine, and his holiness's rights and customs against 
all usurpers of the heretical (or Protestant) authority 
whatsoever: especially against the now pretended 
authority and Church of England, and all adherents, 
in regard that they and she be usurpal and heretical, 
opposing the sacred mother Church of Rome. I do 
renounce and disown any allegiance as due to any 
heretical king, prince, or state, named Protestants, or 
obedience to any of their inferior magistrates or offi- 



116 

to the interests of the popes, the 43d canon 
of the Council of Lateran, under Innocent 
III., actually forbids the Romish priests from 
taking the oath of allegiance to the civil go- 

cers. I do further declare, that the doctrine of the 
Church of England, of the Calvinists, Huguenots, 
and of other of the name Protestants, to be damna- 
ble, and they themselves are damned, and to be 
damned, that will not forsake the same. I do further 
declare, that T will help, assist, and advise all, or any 
of his holiness's agents in any place, wherever I 
shall be, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, or in any 
other territory or kingdom I shall come to ; and do 
my utmost to extirpate the heretical Protestants' 
doctrine, and to destroy all their pretended powers, 
regal or otherwise. I do further promise and declare, 
that notwithstanding I am dispensed with to assume 
any religion heretical for the propagating of the mo- 
ther church's interest, to keep secret and private all 
her agents' counsels from time to time, as they in- 
trust me, and not to divulge, directly or indirectly, by 
word, writing, or circumstances whatsoever : but to 
execute all that shall be proposed, given in charge, 
or discovered unto me, by you my ghostly father, or 
by any of this sacred convent. All which I, A. B., 
do swear by the blessed Trinity, and blessed sacra- 
ment, which I now am to receive, to perform, and on 
my part to keep inviolably : And do call all the hea- 



117 

vernment : " Sacri auctoritate Concilii pro 
hibemus," &c. " By the sacred authority 
of this Council, we declare, that it is unlaw- 
ful for secular princes to require an oath of 
fidelity and allegiance of their clergy ; and 
peremptorily forbid all priests from taking 
any such oath if it be required" According 
to this canon, no Romish priest can be na- 
turalized as a citizen of our republic. It is 
a curious topic of inquiry, whether Romish 
priests do generally become naturalized or 
not. Would it not be an interesting and 
important circumstance, if the inquiry should 
establish the fact, that of the whole mass of 
foreign priests, not one has become a natu- 
ralized citizen of our country? We do not 
assert the fact, yet we should not be sur- 
prised if it is found true. We have never 

venly and glorious host of heaven to witness these 
my real intentions to keep this my oath. In testi- 
mony hereof, I take this most holy and blessed sa- 
crament of the eucharist ; and witness the same fur- 
ther with my hand and seal in the face of this holy 

convent, this day of An. Dom., &c. — 

M'Gavin's Protestant, Vol, ii. p. 256. 



118 

ourselves heard of a case of such naturali- 
zation. 

Thus have we presented to you some of 
the anti-republican principles of popery, de- 
rived not from doubtful sources, not from 
the fabrications of Protestants, but from the 
bulls and canons of the Romanists them- 
selves, all which the priests are by oath 
bound to observe. Prior to the Reformation 
these principles were fully acted out in Eu- 
rope; and since that time they are still ob- 
served in all Catholic countries, except 
where the civil governments, even though 
Catholic, have not fully submitted. In our 
own country the priests can accomplish their 
objects only by degrees. Yet do we not 
perceive symptoms of their progress? Is it 
not a fact, that even at this day there are 
some popish nunneries, &c, in our country, 
into the interior of which no civil officer is 
ever admitted?* Does not this look like a 



* The following documents in relation to the Con- 
vent in Baltimore, are taken from the Baltimore 
Literary and Religious Magazine, edited by the Rev. 



119 

a gradual assertion of the claim to exemp- 
tion from civil control enjoined by their bulls 
and canons'? The hostility of their leaders 

R. J. Breckinridge. The witnesses are credible and 
respectable persons, and no explanation has yet been 
given of the mysterious circumstance to which they 
relate. If such cries had been heard in any other in- 
stitution, would the civil authorities not have exa- 
mined into the matter? 

STATEMENT. 

We whose names are subscribed hereto, declare 
and certify, that on or about the — day of ■ 183-, 
about nine o'clock at night, as we were returning 
home from a meeting in the Methodist Protestant 
Church, at the corner of Pitt and Aisquith street, and 
when opposite the Carmelite Convent and school in 
Aisquith street, our attention was suddenly arrested 
by a loud scream issuing from the upper story of the 
Convent. The sound was that of a female voice in- 
dicating great distress — we stopped and heard a 
second scream, and then a third, in quick succes- 
sion, accompanied with the cry of help ! help ! 
oh, lord ! help ! with the appearance of great ef- 
fort. After this there was nothing more heard by 
us during the space often or fifteen minutes — we re- 
mained about that time on the pavement opposite the 
building from which the cries came. 



120 

to our political institutions has even been 
openly professed, and therefore cannot well 
be denied by them, nor doubted by the most 

When the cries were first heard, no light was visi- 
ble in the fourth story, from which the cries seemed 
to issue. After the cries, lights appeared in the second 
and third stories — seeming to pass rapidly from place 
to place, indicating haste and confusion. Finally, all 
the lights disappeared from the second and third sto- 
ries, and the house became quiet. 

No one passed along the street where we stood, 
while we stood there. But one of our party was a 
man, and he advanced in life — all the remainder of 
ns were women. The watch was not yet set, as 
some of us heard 9 o'clock cried before we got home. 
Many of us have freely spoken of these things since 
their occurrence, and now, at the request of Messrs. 
B. and C. and M. we give this statement, which we 
solemnly declare to be true — and sign it with our 
names. 

John Brushcup, 
Lavinia Brown, 
Sophronia Brushcup, 
Hannah Leach, 
Sarah E. Baker, 
Elizabeth Polk. 
Baltimore, March 13/&, 1835. 



121 

charitable Protestants. Bishop Flaget of 
Kentucky complains in his letters to his su- 
periors in Europe, that the conversion of the 

CERTIFICATE OF THE MINISTER. 

This is to certify that John Brushcup, Hannah 
Leach, Sophronia Brushcup, Lavinia Brown, and Sa- 
rah E. Baker, are acceptable members of the Metho- 
dist Protestant Church, of Pitt street station. 

(Signed) 

William Collier, Superintendent, 

We take leave then (says the editor of the Maga- 
zine) to say in conclusion: — 1. This whole subject 
must be perfectly familiar to the Superior of the Con- 
vent, and to the Priest who resides there as Confessor 
to the establishment, and we demand of them an ex- 
plicit and satisfactory account of this affair; in default 
of receiving which, we shall put upon their silence 
the only construction it can bear. 

2. The Archbishop of this diocess ought to know 
that such transactions are perpetrated in this establish- 
ment. And if all his American feelings are not swal- 
lowed up in his vows and duties to the head of the 
Holy Roman state, we expect and call upon him to 
ferret out this transaction and relieve the public mind, 
by a full statement of the affair. 

3. To aid him in his humane labours, we have to 

11 



122 

Indians to Romanism is principally retarded 
by their intercourse with the whites, " which," 

say, that we are well assured that two females have 
died within six months in the Carmelite Convent; 
and if he will furnish us with the date of their deaths, 
then we will famish him with the date of the terrible 
affair to which we now call his paternal notice. 

And yet, in regard to entering into these abodes of 
uncleanness and cruelty, Catholic priests, according to 
the doctrine of their own sainted Ligori, feel it a d uty to 
encourage children not to consult their own parents, the 
natural protectors whom God has given them. " Chil- 
dren (says Ligori) who wish to enter into the religions 
state (that is, to become monks or nuns) are not bound, 
neither is it expedient for them, to consult their pa- 
rents. Children should be very cautious in respect 
to their vocation to a religious life, not to consult their 
parents (!!!); for it is said, 4 make thy case known 
to thy friend,' because one's carnal relations are not 
friends in this affair, but enemies, according to what 
the Lord has said — ' A man's enemies are those of 
his own household.' From all this, the conclusion is, 
that children who enter into the religious state without 
consulting their parents, do not sin, but, generally 
speaking, they greatly err, if they let them know any 
thing about their vocation." — Smith's Synopsis of 
Ligori, p. 231. 



123 

he adds, " cannot be hindered as long as this 
Republic shall subsist" Mr. Baraga, another 
Austrian Jesuit, laments " the evils of a free 
government" and of " this too free govern- 
ment! !" When therefore we reflect, that 
republican institutions are alike hostile to the 
ecclesiastical despotism of Rome, and the 
civil despotism of Austria and Europe gene- 
rally, nothing can be more evident than that 
the downfall of our government would ad- 
vance the interests of both ecclesiastical and 
political monarchists, and is naturally de- 
sired by them, even if they had not them- 
selves confessed the fact. The monarchists 
and statesmen of Europe well know the 
fruitlessness of an attempt to destroy our 
republic by open invasion. The only mode 
of reaching us is by indirect action. What 
pretext could be more specious than that of 
religion ? And as Popery, which is a system 
of politico-religious despotism, is well under- 
stood to be hostile to liberty in every form, 
the enemies of human rights must rejoice in 
its extension, however indifferent they may 
be to every thing like true religion. When, 



124 

under these circumstances, we see hundreds 
of societies organized in Catholic Europe, 
and patronized by the first politicians and 
monarchists of Austria, to propagate popery 
in America, their motive may be easily con- 
jectured. When we learn, too, that this 
motive is the current topic of conversation 
in the higher circles of Europe, and that the 
few friends of human liberty there feel an 
anxious apprehension from the machinations 
of Roman priests; when even the venerable 
patriot Lafayette was constrained to exclaim 
to different American citizens, "If the liber- 
ties of your country are destroyed, it can 
only be by the popish clergy ;"* it becomes 

# "The very last interview (says Professor Morse) 
which I had with Lafayette on the morning of my 
departure from Paris, fall of his usual concern for 
America, he made use of the same warning; and in a 
letter which I received from him but a few days after 
at Havre, he alludes to the whole subject, with the 
hope expressed that I would make known the real 
state of things in Europe to my countrymen : at the 
same time charging it upon me as a sacred duty as 
an American, to acquaint them with the fears which 
were entertained by the friends of republican liberty, 



125 

us to lend respectful attention to this subject, 
and in a suitable, Christian manner, endea- 
vour to resist the encroachments of the 
enemy. 

Here we are met by the objection, that 
papists, when interrogated, deny every inten- 
tion hostile to our liberties, and ought they 
not to be believed? We answer, the mass 
of common papists we have already exone- 
rated from the charge of being privy to such 
designs. The secret has not been confided 
to them. They are only taught implicitly 
to obey the priest and pope and councils, at 
the hazard of eternal ruin, and thus, in due 
time, as common soldiers, to obey their com- 
manders. But, some of their leading bishops 
and priests have denied all such design- 
True, but these are well acquainted with the 
decree of the council of Constance, that no 
faith need be kept with heretics, in virtue of 
which poor Huss, though in possession of a 
letter of safe conduct from Emperor Sigis- 

in regard to our country." — Preface to Professor 
Morse's edition of " Confessions of a French Catho- 
lic Priest," &c. p. ix. 



126 

mund himself, was committed to the flames. 
They well know also that this canon with 
respect to not keeping faith with heretics 
was distinctly recognized by the council of 
Trent, the last general council that has been 
held ; and that it is therefore still in force.* 

* M'Gavin's Protestant, vol. i. p. 203, 204. His- 
tory abundantly testifies how faithfully the decree of 
that Council has been observed. Not to insist upon 
the numerous plots and conspiracies against the re- 
formed religion in Great Britain, from its establish- 
ment to the memorable gunpowder conspiracy, and 
the Irish conspiracy in 1729; witness the martyrdom 
of John Huss, who, though he had a safe conduct 
from the emperor Sigismund, guaranteeing his free 
access to the Council of Constance, and his free re- 
turn from it, was nevertheless imprisoned there ; and, 
after a process on a charge of heresy, was condemned 
and burnt to death, in violation of every law, human 
and divine. Witness the massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew. Witness also the massacre of 1641, in Ireland, 
where (as in France, sixty-nine years before) no ties 
of nature or of friendship could prevent papists from 
embruing their hands in the blood of their nearest 
Protestant relations. To these instances may be add- 
ed the unprincipled revocation of the sacred and ir- 
revocable edict of Nantes, by Louis XIV., against 



127 

Now supposing these priests even to be con- 
scientious men, as they believe and obey 
those canons, they can state any thing, and 
deny any thing, even with an oath, as the 
papal bull declares, and their oath itself is 
not binding if the violation of it advances the 
interests of the church! So long, therefore, 
as these canons remain unaltered, and priests 
continue by an oath to bind themselves to 

the faith of the most solemn treaties. Once more, in 
1712, when by virtue of the treaty of Alt-Rastadt cer- 
tain places were to be surrendered to some Protestant 
princes, Pope Clement XL in a letter to the Emperor 
Charles VI. denounced the Protestants as 4i an exe- 
crable sect," and in the plenitude of his pretended 
supremacy declared that every thing, which either 
was or could be construed or esteemed to be in any 
way obstructive of, or in the least degree prejudicial 
to the Romish faith or worship, or to the authority, 
jurisdiction, or any rights of the church whatsoever, 
" to be, and to have been, and perpetually to remain 
hereafter null, unjust, reprobated, void, and evacuated 
of all force from the beginning; and that no person is 
bound to the observance of them, although the same 
have been repeated, ratified, or secured by oath." — 
Digest of Evidence on the State of Ireland, Part ii. 
p. 243, Home on Romanism, p. 35. 



128 

obey them 5 they cannot reasonably expect 
intelligent Protestants to believe their dis- 
claimer. At the time of the American re- 
volution, the several Protestant churches, 
"whose creeds contained a profession of alle- 
giance to kings, &c, or other principles in- 
consistent with our republican institutions, 
expunged the objectionable articles, and 
threw off all foreign allegiance. But Catho- 
lics have never done so. Let them do this; 
let them openly renounce allegiance to al! 
foreign potentates, and reject those canons 
of councils and bulls of the popes, which are 
hostile to our liberties; and they will secure 
the confidence of their fellow citizens: we 
shall be among the first to do them justice. 
In the mean time we must regard as the spe- 
cial work of God, that glorious Reformation, 
which opened the eyes of Europe on the 
corruptions and arrogant claims of popery; 
which taught princes to vindicate their rights 
against the encroachments of the pretended 
vicar of Him who had " no kingdom of this 
world." Let us cherish the recollection of 
that wondrous work of God, which restored 



129 

to the people the blessed Bible, that principal 
instrument of the Reformation, and rendered 
accessible to all, the pure and unerring plan 
of salvation taught by the Saviour and his 
apostles. In view of all the facts of the case, 
let the patriot and the Christian seriously 
inquire, whether the subject of progressive 
Romanism amongst us is not worthy of their 
attention; whether love to their wives and 
children does not call upon them to guard 
against even the distant dangers of papal 
cruelty and superstition ? Let them not re- 
gard with indifference the rapid increase of 
those foreign emissaries among us, who still 
retain their allegiance to a foreign power. 
Let them not regard as uncharitable those 
who re-echo the alarm which the apostle of 
liberty, Lafayette, first sounded in our ears. 
That order of men especially, now spread- 
ing over our land, the disciples of Loyola, 
who have proved so formidable to the strong 
arm of civil government in Europe, as to 
have been suppressed or banished at thirty 
different times, should not be regarded as a 
contemptible foe, or as unworthy of being 



130 

attentively watched. Indeed nothing but 
want of acquaintance with their history, 
can lead any friend of liberty to view them 
with indifference. Let civilians and states- 
men investigate, not the religious doctrines, 
but the political principles and political ca- 
nons of popery, for popery is not less a 
political* than a religious system. The 

* The writer would earnestly invite the attention 
of his fellow citizens to the following extract from a 
highly interesting recent work, entitled, "Confessions 
of a French Catholic Priest ; to which are added, 
Warnings to the People of the United States" This 
priest is now in New York, and the translator, S. F. 
B. Morse, of the New York University, vouches for 
the character of the author and credibility of his 
statements. The scenes here revealed by one who 
was himself an actor in them, but whose awakened 
conscience prompted him to abandon such a corrupt 
association, will enable politicians to appreciate the 
solemn prediction of the great Lafayette, that if Ame- 
rican liberty is destroyed it will be by Catholic priests* 
In reference to our own country, we would merely 
say, "What intelligent politician does not know that, 
in some places, the Romanists already hold the ba- 
lance at our elections, and that whenever a papist is 
a candidate, or any thing can be gained to their 



131 

priests and Jesuits form a standing army of 
foreign allegiance in our midst. Uncon- 

cause, or either party is thought more favourable to 
the papists as such, they move in a body under the 
direction of the priest, with a unanimity utterly un- 
known in any Protestant sect] Their priesthood is 
a compactly organized legion, spread over the length 
and breadth of our land, each of whom can control 
almost every Catholic vote in his parish. All these 
priests are moved by eleven bishops, and by the 
archbishop and the pope's legate, Bishop England, 
the head of the Jesuitic order in this country. And 
all these, down to the lowest priest, are under an oath 
of allegiance to the pope, who is a political as well 
as religious prince, while, if we mistake not, few if 
any of them (the great majority of them are foreign- 
ers) have taken the oath of naturalization and sworn 
allegiance to our own government. Would it not be 
prudent, in the present circumstances of our country, 
to require by law all foreign priests and ministers of 
any and every denomination, Protestant and Catholic, 
before they can exercise their professional functions 
in this country, to become naturalized, and thus take 
the oath of allegiance to our own government 1 Let 
the reader peruse the following extract from the 
warning of the converted priest, and then answer my 
question : — 

"Americans of every age, of every rank, magis- 



132 

nected with our population by the ties of do- 
mestic life, they live subservient to the in- 

trates and citizens, rich and poor, clergy and laity, 
by all that is dearest to you, let a single feeling ani- 
mate you ; unite your ranks as in the day of battle, 
and if your foe attempts to introduce himself here, to 
creep in among you, let him meet every where an im- 
penetrable wall; if he proposes to you to exchange 
the simple and pure faith of your fathers for his fana- 
ticisms and superstitions, your liberty for his thral- 
dom, answer as you would answer if any tyrant should 
propose to you to surrender your national flag and 
betray your county. 

" Such is the duty of every American, however 
3 t ou may be divided. Some ambitious men, I am 
informed, are to be found among you, hungry for 
power, who do not blush to make use of Catholics 
to compass their ends at the elections. Do those 
men belong to that American people whose fidelity, 
union, and devotion, sixty years ago, astonished Eu- 
rope, and commanded the admiration of the world I 
In the days of your immortal struggle you had but 
one Arnold to betray the noble cause, and his name 
is dishonoured forever; and now, Americans, for- 
getful of their origin, of their duty and country, for- 
getful of the patriotism of their fathers, of the blood 
which flows in their veins, buy and beg the very 
voices of their enemies, of Roman Catholic priests. 



133 

terests of their alien master, and fight his 
battles. They are servants of the state as 

This only fact is an awfal symptom, and proves but 
too truly that my fears are well founded. 

" But perhaps those misguided, ambitious men do 
not know the enemy with whom they would join 
themselves. Let them open their eyes then, and 
learn what true Catholics, and especially what priests 
have lately done in the elections of France. The 
history of past events is a lesson for the present day. 
When Louis XVIII. in 1819 granted his charter, 
which gave some rights to the French, all the true 
Catholics, and the clergy above all, chafed by this 
recognition of the people's rights, left no means un- 
tried to violate and distort it, till they destroyed it by 
the ordinances of July, 1830. During this long strug- 
gle of fifteen years, between Absolutism and Libe- 
ralism, my fellow priests used all their power to re- 
vive their party, especially on the great day of elec- 
tions. Then our bishops, (creatures of the king,) 
sent us their circulars, in order to warm our zeal and 
ardour. 

" And we, the faithful slaves of our spiritual Su- 
periors, used all our influence — made public prayers 
for good elections ; we preached in the pulpit to our 
parishioners, in the catechism to the boys, in the con- 
fessional to every body, that Liberalism (or the party 
of Liberty) was a guilty heresy ; it was a mortal sin 
12 



134 

well as of the altar. Above all, let politicians, 
statesmen, and Christians of every denomi- 

to give one's voice for this party, and we tried by 
every means to dishonour and tarnish its adherents.* 
The throne and the altar was the watch-word, was 
the enjoined text of all our discourses. We required 
in confession rigorously, from the electors, the name 
and opinion of their candidates, obliged them to vote 
according to our direction, under pain of refusal of 
absolution, j- If electors themselves did not come to 
the confession, we had their wives and daughters ; 
and we recommended to them that they should em- 
ploy all their influence to make their fathers and hus- 
bands of our party. 

" The government, which relied upon our zeal, which 
knew that its interests were ours, instituted many 

* A singular proof of the natural hatred of the clergy for liberty, 
is, that Lafayette is represented by them as a very bad man. In 
order to judge of this hero's character, it was necessary for me to come 
to America. 

t In 1833, the author assisted at the administration of the last 
sacraments to a dying country gentleman. The origin of his fortune 
was questionable, and he was a member of the Liberal party. His 
priest enjoined him, in order to legitimate his riches, to make some 
donations to the church ; but as for his vote, the priest compelled him 
to call in his family, to beg pardon, for the scandal of having given his 
vote to a Liberal man, and to beseech his eldest son not to follow his 
example. 



135 



nation unite in circulating the unadulterated 
word of God, without note or comment, 



societies of itinerant missionaries. They went from 
city to city, from village to village, to revive the 
ashes of Catholicism and preach servitude. They 
formed brotherhoods and associations of both sexes, 
in which they enlisted the most devoted knights of 
their religion and royalism, the most ardent foes of 
liberty. And (striking circumstance, the best proof 
of the truth of my observations) all the deputies 
named by the country electors were enemies of liberty 
and of the press, because those country electors were 
under the influence of curates ; while in the cities the 
electors, more free and learned, chose deputies who 
were friends of freedom. 

" But when our party* saw that all its exertions 
were vain and useless, it introduced into the court of 
Charles X., about 1826, a secret ecclesiastic council, 
composed of the cardinals De la Fare and De Latil, 
achbishops of Rouen and Rheims, the archbishop of 
Paris, M. De Guelen, and some pious laymen, wor- 
thy of their holy society. This council, called the 
Camarilla, directed all the acts of government ; forced 
the public functionaries to go to confession ; required 

* As I was only a secondary wheel of this infernal machinery, I 
knew not all its secrets ; but these few revelations are true to the 
letter. 



136 

either Papal or Protestant, among our Catho- 
lic fellow citizens, and in persuading them to 

from all the candidates to public situations an attes- 
tation of Catholic and Royalist principles delivered 
by the curate ; pressed the unhappy Charles X. to 
name his stupid ministry of the 8th of August, 1829 ; 
and at length, to issue the fatal ordinances of July, 
1830. Thus has the Popish clergy lengthened the 
struggle for liberty, and compromised the well-being 
of thirty-three millions of Frenchmen ; thus it has 
divided them into two camps of mortal enemies ; 
thus, at last, has it ingloriously crowned the long 
story of its cruelty and oppression in my unfortunate 
country. 

" Since the accession of Louis Philip, the priests 
have kindled again the flames of civil war. They 
have sprinkled again with holy water the guns and 
pick-axes of the poor and slavish peasants of La 
Vendee* and Britagny, to raise them against the po- 
pular throne. But this new crime has ended, after 
some bloody fights, in bringing on La Vendee an 
army of thirty thousand soldiers, who, at the present 
time, crush this province, the tool of its priests ; and 

* Every body knows that La Vendee has been devastated by sword 
and flames, and unpeopled, in its wars excited by its priests against 
the republic in 1793-4. They attempted in 1830 to renew the same 
horrors, but Philip has employed the most rigorous and oppressive 
measures to prevent it. 



137 

search the Scriptures and think for them- 
selves. Let efforts be made to bring their 
children under the influence of Sabbath 
school instruction. Let all, both young and 
old, be treated in the spirit of true Christian 
benevolence, and we doubt not, that under 
God, much can be accomplished for the pre- 
servation of our liberties, and the glory of 
our Divine Master. 

the clergy, seeing that Philip becomes from day to day 
as despotic as his predecessors, rallies itself round 
him, and unites once more the throne and the altar. 
Such as these are the men with whom you ally your- 
selves, Americans ; whose suffrages you beg, whose 
assistance you ask, in your elections : these are the 
men with whom you would divide the future desti- 
nies of your country. I wish you would but look at 
the history of Popery, and examine and see if ever a 
Catholic country has been happy" — p. 245-249. 

See also, on the political bearings of Popery, Dr. 
Breckinridge's Discussion with Mr. Hughes, passim. 



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